The statue of Philip III in Plaza Mayor and the legend of the birds

In the middle of Plaza Mayor, Madrid's grand main square, a bronze king rides at a walk. The horse lifts one foreleg, arches its neck and wears a long, flowing mane. It looks like the calmest statue in Madrid. Its story is anything but: a gift from Florence that spent more than two centuries in a garden, a chronicler who brought it to the square, a king who left the square and came back, and an explosion. Let's take it a piece at a time.

Where does the statue of Philip III come from?

From Florence. In 1606 Grand Duke Ferdinando I de' Medici commissioned an equestrian statue of the Spanish king Philip III from the sculptor Giambologna. Giambologna modelled the horse but died before he could make the figure of the king. That figure is attributed to Pietro Tacca, whose signature is on the horse's girth.

Once in Madrid, the bronze didn't go to any square. It stood first in the gardens of the Alcázar, the royal palace at the time, and from 1617 in the Jardín Reservado, a private garden in the Casa de Campo. It stayed there until 1848. More than two hundred years as a garden ornament.

Meanwhile, the king on the horse had already left his mark elsewhere. Philip III ordered the old Plaza del Arrabal to be rebuilt, and the architect Juan Gómez de Mora finished it in 1619. That's Plaza Mayor. At its festivities, according to writers of the time, it could hold up to fifty thousand spectators.

Who put the statue in Plaza Mayor?

A chronicler. Ramón de Mesonero Romanos is the great storyteller of old Madrid: he walked the streets of a city that was disappearing and wrote it all down. He was also a city councillor. In May 1846, as part of his Plan for General Improvements, he proposed moving the statue to Plaza Mayor. His argument was hard to fault: Philip III was the king who'd built the square.

Queen Isabella II agreed, and in 1848 the horse was set up in the square on a pedestal by Juan José Sánchez Pescador, the architect of the Casas del Cordero building on Puerta del Sol.

Mesonero told the story in his book El antiguo Madrid (Old Madrid), published in 1861, with one endearing slip: he credits the statue to a certain "Felipe de Borgoña". Even the best chroniclers get the sculptor wrong.

The square that welcomed the horse, by the way, was no longer quite Philip III's. On the night of 16 August 1790 a fire broke out that destroyed its eastern side, and the architect Juan de Villanueva rebuilt it: he lowered the buildings, closed off the corners and opened archways. The square was fully enclosed by 1853.

Has the statue always been in Plaza Mayor?

No. After 1868 it was taken down and put in the city's storerooms. During the First Spanish Republic there was a proposal to replace it with an allegory honouring the Martyrs of 7 July 1822, but it never got beyond the planning stage. In 1875 Philip III was back on his plinth.

He wasn't the only thing in the square that went up and came down. The square itself had been changing its nameplate for decades. In 1812 a plaque was unveiled above the balcony of the Casa de la Panadería, the old bakery building, naming it Plaza de la Constitución (Constitution Square). It was smashed in 1814, put back in 1820, torn down in 1823 to make way for one reading Plaza Real (Royal Square), and the Constitution plaque returned after 1833. In Plaza Mayor, every change of government showed up in stone and bronze.

What happened to the horse in 1931?

In April 1931, after the Republic was proclaimed, someone stuffed firecrackers into the horse's mouth. The blast brought the whole group down. The horse lost its head, neck and hindquarters, and the king was decapitated.

Juan Cristóbal rebuilt it using more than a hundred pieces, in work that lasted until 1934. So part of what you see today is that reconstruction.

Here's a detail worth noticing. The official listing of the statue as a protected monument, which describes the attack precisely, says the firecrackers were put in through the horse's mouth. In other words, in 1931 that mouth was open. And that's exactly where the legend gets in.

Were there really dead birds inside the horse?

The story that does the rounds goes like this: for years, little birds flew in through the horse's open mouth, couldn't find the way out and died inside. When the horse was broken open, their bones came to light, and that's why its mouth was sealed. In the version we've read, the bones turn up after the 1931 explosion; other websites place the discovery at a different time altogether.

Is it true? The honest answer is that we don't know. The version we've read comes from recent popular writing that doesn't say where it got the story. The official listing, which goes through the explosion and the reconstruction piece by piece, says nothing about birds. And we haven't found any report or newspaper story from the time that mentions bones. The fact that different versions can't agree on a date doesn't help either.

Perhaps one day a newspaper from those days will turn up and confirm it. Until then, it is what it is: a cracking legend with no paperwork behind it. And the documented story is odd enough already: a Florentine horse that was blown apart through its own mouth.

Fact or legend?

• Fact: commissioned from Giambologna by Ferdinando I de' Medici in 1606; the king's figure attributed to Pietro Tacca, who signed the girth; in the gardens of the Alcázar and then the Casa de Campo until 1848; proposed for the square by Mesonero in 1846 and installed in 1848; taken down after 1868 and back in 1875; firecrackers through the horse's mouth in April 1931 and a reconstruction that lasted until 1934.
• A plan that never happened: replacing the king with an allegory of the Martyrs of 7 July 1822, during the First Republic.
• Unproven legend: the birds' bones inside the horse, and the mouth sealed because of them. We haven't found any source from the time, and the versions going round can't even agree on the date.
• A chronicler's mistake: Mesonero credited the statue to a "Felipe de Borgoña".

Where to hear it

The story of the horse is told in front of the statue, at the stop "The Florentine horse that burst open" on From Puerta del Sol to Plaza Mayor, Podtour's free route in Madrid: eleven stops over just over a kilometre. The route starts beside the Bear and the Strawberry Tree, another statue that's moved house, at the stop "The bear that moved". And in Plaza Mayor, the stop "Five names for one square" tells the story of the battle of the nameplates.

If you're planning your trip, the Madrid guide has the practical side covered.

Further reading

• Comunidad de Madrid, Patrimonio Cultural, «Monumento ecuestre al Rey Felipe III, en la Plaza Mayor de Madrid» (listing as a Bien de Interés Cultural, Decree 122/2017; in Spanish). https://www.comunidad.madrid/node/75810
• Ramón de Mesonero Romanos, El antiguo Madrid. Paseos histórico-anecdóticos por las calles y casas de esta villa (Madrid, 1861; in Spanish). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/elantiguomadridp00meso
• Madrid City Council, esMadrid, "Plaza Mayor". https://www.esmadrid.com/informacion-turistica/plaza-mayor
• Madrid City Council, esMadrid, "El Oso y el Madroño". https://www.esmadrid.com/informacion-turistica/oso-madrono