Estación de Chamberí: the ghost station beneath Plaza de Chamberí in Madrid

Beneath Plaza de Chamberí, on the corner with calle Santa Engracia, there is a staircase leading down to a Madrid metro station where no train has stopped for nearly sixty years. It is the Estación de Chamberí, reopened in 2008 as a museum under the name Andén 0 ("Platform 0"). It was part of Madrid's first metro line, inaugurated in 1919 and designed by the architect Antonio Palacios. It was closed in 1966: the trains were getting longer and the platforms needed widening, but the curve on which Chamberí sat made that impossible. It was simpler to wall up the entrances and leave it as it was. And so it remained, until the restoration of the 2000s.

The station

What you see today is the station just as it was when it was in service. The ceramic tiling designed by Palacios is still in place, and on the walls the original advertising signs survive in glazed tiles: adverts from the 1920s and 1930s promoting products that vanished generations ago, in the typefaces and colours of the era. There are the information panels, the names of the stops, the platform furnishings. What makes it special is that the station is not sealed off: Line 1 still runs on the same tracks. Standing on the andén you can watch trains in service race past behind a glass wall, without slowing, packed with commuters who often have no idea they are passing through a museum.

The view works the other way round too. If you take Line 1 between the Bilbao and Iglesia stops and look out of the window, for a few seconds you see Chamberí gliding past, lit up alongside you: it is one of the most curious details of the Madrid metro, and many Madrileños know it only from those few instants behind the glass.

The visit

The visit is free but comes with two firm rules: you can only go in on a guided tour, and you need to book in advance. Booking is done online on the official Metro Museums site, museosmetromadrid.es. The tour lasts between 20 and 40 minutes, long enough to walk the platform, read the signs and understand how the station was laid out. Capacity is limited (around 28 people per slot), so on busy weekends with groups you may have to wait. The opening times are concentrated on a few days: roughly Friday afternoon, Saturday morning and afternoon, and Sunday morning. Since they change with the season, it is worth checking the exact slots when you book. For information, the Metro Museums can be reached on 644 16 95 31.

Getting there

Getting there is easy because the Chamberí neighbourhood is well served. The entrance is on the Plaza de Chamberí. The nearest metro stops are Iglesia (Line 1), Bilbao (Lines 1 and 4), Alonso Martínez (Lines 4, 5, 10), Quevedo (Line 2) and Rubén Darío (Line 5); at street level several EMT buses stop just a few steps away. Once you come back up, it is worth lingering in Chamberí: it is a nineteenth-century residential district, with its covered market and quiet streets, off the tourist axis that runs from Sol to the Prado.

It remains a spot little visited for practical reasons: it opens only in certain slots, it has to be booked, and it does not appear on the city's classic circuits. But that is precisely what makes it interesting for anyone who wants to see a different Madrid, and the visit costs nothing. For those who ride the metro every day, getting off at Chamberí also means understanding a little better the history of a network that in Madrid is more than a century old.

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