Calle de Amaltea

Behind this name there is a goat, or perhaps a nymph with a goat, who raised a god. In Greek mythology, Amalthea cared for the newborn Zeus in a cave on Crete while Rhea hid him from Cronus, his father, who devoured his children so that none would dethrone him. The child fed on the animal’s milk far from any watching eye. From that myth comes one of the most repeated images in Western art. The goat lost one of its horns, which filled with fruit and was given to Zeus as an inexhaustible source of nourishment. So the cornucopia was born, the horn of plenty that became an emblem of prosperity. Calle de Amaltea lies in the Delicias neighbourhood, in Arganzuela, an area of southern Madrid that for centuries was meadowland beside the Manzanares. No record survives of the exact reason the street map chose this classical name here.