Calle Angosta de los Mancebos

Calle Angosta de los Mancebos is the only street in Madrid still carrying the adjective “angosta” (narrow) to tell it apart from its elder sister, calle de los Mancebos, with which it shares a name. The label describes what you see: a very tight passage, barely a few metres wide, dropping down to calle de Bailén in the heart of the Habsburg quarter. It was once called calle del Estudio Vieja, and there an older story appears. In 1346 Alfonso XI granted the town its first grammar school, the Estudio de la Villa, on the neighbouring calle de los Mancebos; it declined until it closed in 1619. The Lasso de Castilla family lived here, their palace standing beside the church of San Andrés. The memory of the place runs deep: at number 3, in 1975, a flint plinth from the town’s old wall came to light, and the dig turned up material from the Bronze Age down to medieval times. Then there is the legend, the part most passed from mouth to mouth: the name is said to come from two lads executed for the death of King Henry I in 1217, though the boy-king actually died from a stray stone while playing.