Calle de Calderón de la Barca

Calderón de la Barca died wishing to rest beside a church that no longer exists, and the street bearing his name was opened over a convent that no longer exists either. It occupies part of the site of the old convent of the Salutation of Our Lady, which everyone called “de Constantinopla.” Suppressed and emptied in 1836, it was demolished around 1840, and in the gap this street and the calle de Juan de Herrera were opened. Mesonero Romanos claimed the naming as his own idea. He chose Calderón because the church of San Salvador stood nearby, where the playwright had asked to be buried; the church fell in 1843 and his remains travelled about until they came to rest, as they do today, in the church of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores. The house where he died on 25 May 1681 is a few steps away, on the Calle Mayor, with a plaque since 2023. The street runs from the Calle Mayor to the plaza del Biombo. Mesonero described it as a succession of “outlandish” bends, and from those turns, it is said, came the name of the Biombo.