Calle Costanilla de San Andrés

The Costanilla de San Andrés climbs up from calle de Segovia, brushes the garden of the Prince of Anglona’s palace and opens into the plaza de la Paja before dying at the plaza de los Carros. For centuries this widening was the great market of the Madrid that came before the Plaza Mayor: here the church of San Andrés auctioned off the feed for its mules, and from that straw (paja) sold in bulk the name remained. The parish that lends its name to the slope rises on the site where tradition places the main mosque of Muslim Madrid. The Catholic Monarchs chose it as a royal chapel and ran a passage from the Lasso palace so they could hear Mass without stepping into the street. Beside it, the Capilla del Obispo —⁠founded by Francisco de Vargas and finished by his son between 1520 and 1535⁠— was born to hold the remains of Saint Isidore, though a lawsuit returned the saint’s body to the parish in 1544. The Vargas palace piled up novelistic misfortunes: the comunero sacking, fire, and in the 19th century a theatre that burned down and the bank of Baldomera Larra, held to be the first documented pyramid fraud in Spain. In 1936 the church burned and lost its whole artistic endowment; it was rebuilt between 1986 and 1990.