The Dome Sylvia Plath Drew

The recent identification of three of Sylvia Plath's drawings was fun. I enjoyed discussing these with Anna Dykta and bouncing off ideas and discussing the nuances of Plath's artwork as well as her travels. The drawing of a dome/tower labelled "Paris rooftops" in Drawings (page 30, 2013) was another of Plath's pen and ink works about which I wondered, for years: where is this?

For a while I have been convinced this was not drawn in Paris. For a while I was convinced based on the evidence Plath left, that it was drawn in Madrid. She wrote in a 7 July 1956 letter to her mother, "If only you could see me now, sitting in haltar and shorts seven stories high above the modern tooting city of Madrid on our large private balcony with gay blue-and-yellow tiles on floor and wall-shelves, pots of geranium and ivy, and across, baroque towers and a blazing blue sky even now, going on eight p.m. Ted is inside writing on another fable and I just finished a detailed design sketch of my sky-view" (Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume 1, 1212). This is corroborated with Plath's pocket calendar, in which she notes, "Madrid – still tired – coffee & fried bread on way to Am. Express – wide hot streets, splendid shops –elegant lunch of veal, mushrooms beans & tomatoes, wine, icecream – nap – drew tower opposite – shower – fine cheap supper – eerie hot night streets – every body out." 

Anna and I, separately in our distant countries, scoured Google Earth, Maps, and Images for "Paris Dome", "Madrid Tower" and various other permutations. Every other day I would fly over Paris and Madrid in Google Earth, scrutinizing anything that resembled Plath's drawing. Anna sent several links to places, one of them being the eventual right building. Which of course we both thought looked right but was missing so much of the details Plath recorded.

Now, this would have been a much easier exercise had we known where in Madrid Plath and Hughes stayed. Through the marvels of what is available on the internet these days, I am happy to say that this "tower" was the tower of the Hotel Suizo, which is now the Casino Gran Via. Though, to be honest, the "tower" might be a lost drawing of the Telefónica Building, a Baroque skyscraper completed in 1929, across the street. In this video, around 2:53 and 3:35, you can actually see the dome that is the subject of this post. 

Originally built by 1924, the building was the Círculo de la Unión Mercantil e Industrial. The ornamental designs are gone from the tower, but historical images yield the necessary evidence to confirm this is what Sylvia Plath set her eyes on to draw on 7 July 1956 within hours of being in the city.

Here is a nice history of the building, on which the last paragraph is helpful in explaining the dome Sylvia Plath drew: "As is sadly common in Madrid, this building has also lost some of its decorative elements, especially at the top of the corner tower, where the splendid cresting that surrounded the base of the dome is missing, as well as the zinc garlands that decorated the slate panels. Fortunately, the most recent restoration replaced the raised ribs that delimit them, which had been gradually removed as they deteriorated during the 1980s and 1990s."

The image on the left is from the magazine La Construcción Moderna of 15 June 1924. The image on the right is from the magazine Cortijos y Rascacielos, 1953. 

Using Google Earth, I was able to rotate and tilt the map enough to provide a more approximate angle to show Plath's point of view, though you still need some imagination to see it. 

And so this ultimately also lets us know that Plath and Hughes stayed, most likely, at the Hotel Suizo, Madrid. They paid $2.75 per night, the most they had ever paid for a hotel room and had a private bathroom. As it was their honeymoon, it is wonderful they splurged for this. This hotel is just over a mile from the train station, just over two miles to the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas bullring where they saw a bullfight, and less than a mile to the Museo Prado, which they visited on Tuesday, 10 July, before their long bus ride to Alicante. At the Prado, Plath noted seeing: "Bosch : 'Garden of Delights' 'Hay Wain', 'Table of 7 Deadly Sins' excellent grotesques – good cranachs, Flemish paintings, Memling El Greco.'

Other Madrid sites they saw were the American Express office, which was, I think, then located at Plaza de las Cortes 2, some big department store, and had a cold beer on Calle de Alcalá, a long street in Madrid not far from their hotel (and which is actually, likely, the road they took to Las Ventas).

There is a hotel across the street on Calle de Hortaleza called Petite Palace Chueca that if you do some Google image searches will offer some nice views of this tower. 

Here are a few more images found from the website linked above for your viewing.

The blueprint above is wonderful as this is the side street, Calle de Hortaleza and the yellow crossed out lines represents a cancelation to the design. This would have mirrored what is on the facade on Gran Via (then called Avenida Conde de Peñalver). I have labeled the floors as Plath mentioned being "seven stories high above the modern tooting city of Madrid". (Though, of course, in Europe the ground floor is 0.)  And below are two views of the dome/tower from this blue print and another from the Gran Via side.

Missing ornamentation to tower

Additional missing ornamentation

All links accessed 16 and 19 May 2025.