A flight cancelation last summer re-routed me through Madrid and gave me a pleasant stroll and dinner near Puerta del Sol—and a re-encounter with the city’s artistic tile street signs.
The signs, mostly in the city’s old heart, are the work of Ruiz de Luna González, a third-generation ceramic artist from the city of Talavera de la Reina, a center for this kind of ceramic work, similar to majolica, and with its roots in the ceramic traditions of Moorish Spain.
The signs he created for the Madrid City Council in 1992—about 1500 of them—reflect the origin stories of the street names as well as his artistic interpretation of them. They are individual works, each hand-painted with oxides on a white glaze. Notice, for instance, two different examples for Puerta del Sol.
More of the street signs, and a fascinating history of Talavera and other ceramic traditions can be found in Clay Culture: Madrid’s Street Signs in Ceramics Monthly
I love these quirky things that make a city unique
Definitely! It’s such a difference from driving into most cities from their airports—could be Brussels, could be Chicago—so finding these signs, or the sidewalks of Lisbon or Barcelona’s opened-out streetcorners is a real pleasure.