Calle del Caballero de Gracia

Sol

For Jacobo de Grattis (1517–1619), a nobleman born in Modena who came to Madrid as the Pope’s diplomat in the time of Philip II and founded religious and charitable institutions. “Gracia” is the Castilian form of his Italian surname. The street was earlier called Calle de la Florida; it took his name after he bought a house and land here in 1588.

Grattis came to Madrid as Gregory XIII’s personal envoy and stayed almost a century, a whole life given over to founding and sustaining religious works, among them the Congregación de Indignos Esclavos del Santísimo Sacramento. In 1588 he bought the house and land he had until then only leased, and the neighbours ended up naming the street after the man who lived on it. The oratory that now bears his name on calle del Caballero de Gracia is much later than he was. The neoclassical building was designed by Juan de Villanueva and finished in 1795, so the Caballero himself never set foot in it.

Its names

  • Calle de la Floridah.1575–1588
  • Calle de Graciah.1588–h.1656
  • Calle del Caballero de Graciah.1656–presente
Sources (12)

Crossings