page_title: Madrid Atocha railway station
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Madrid Atocha railway station / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Exterior of the old Atocha Station in Madrid.
context_page_description: Madrid Atocha is the largest railway station in Madrid. It is the primary station serving commuter trains, regional trains from the south and southeast, intercity trains from Navarre, Cádiz and Huelva and La Rioja, and the AVE high speed trains from Girona, Tarragona and Barcelona, Huesca and Zaragoza, Sevilla, Córdoba and Málaga, Valencia, Castellón and Alicante. These train services are run by the Spanish national rail company, Renfe. As of 2019, this station has daily services to Marseille in France.
context_section_description: At this site, Madrid's first railway station was inaugurated on 9 February 1851 under the name Estación de Mediodía (Atocha-Mediodía is now the name of an area of the Arganzuela district, and means south in old Spanish).
  After the building was largely destroyed by fire, it was rebuilt by the MZA railway company and reopened in 1892. The architect for the replacement, in a wrought iron renewal style was Alberto de Palacio Elissagne, who collaborated with Gustave Eiffel. Engineer Henry Saint James also took part in the project. The name Atocha has become attached to the station because of the nearby basilica dedicated to Our Lady of Atocha. The train platforms were partly covered by a roof in the form of inverted hull with a height of approximately 27 meters and length of 157 meters. The steel and glass roof spreads between two brick flanking buildings.
  This complex of railway tracks expanded through the years. In 1985, a project of complete remodeling began, based on designs by Rafael Moneo. In 1992, the original building was taken out of service as a terminal, and converted into a concourse with shops, cafés, and a nightclub. Like the Orsay Museum in Paris, the concourse has been given a new function, that being in the case of Atocha a stunning 4,000 m² (43,056 sq ft) covered tropical garden.
  A modern terminal was also designed by Moneo, and built in adjacent land to serve both the new High Speed trains, regional and local commuter lines. The main lines end in the new terminal; regional and commuter train platforms are located underground, at the ingress to a rail tunnel extending northward under the Paseo de la Castellana. The station is served by two Madrid Metro stations, Estación del Arte (located nearby Museo Reina Sofía) and the Atocha Renfe metro station. The latter was added when the new terminal building was constructed and is directly linked to the railway station, providing access to Line 1. A connection to Line 11 will be constructed in the first half of the 2020s.
caption: Exterior of old Atocha station
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