Calle de Carlos III

Barely eighty-five metres separate the plaza de Isabel II from the plaza de Oriente, brushing the side of the Teatro Real: this is the calle de Carlos III, one of the shortest in the Centro district. The ground, however, has been telling stories for centuries. Since the Middle Ages the calle de Santa Catalina la Vieja ran here, wiped off the map by the Napoleonic occupation: between 1809 and 1810 Joseph Bonaparte demolished some fifty buildings around the Palace to open a grand avenue to the Puerta del Sol. The paradox has its charm: the stretch sprang from a Bonapartist reform but was dedicated to the Bourbon king who most transformed Madrid. Charles III (1716–1788), “Madrid’s best mayor,” paved and lit streets, raised the Puerta de Alcalá, laid out the Salón del Prado, founded the Botanical Garden, and set the future Museo del Prado on its way. For decades the street lived to the pulse of the Teatro Real. At number 1 the Café Español opened in 1851, with cherubs on the ceiling and red plush sofas, where the Machado brothers held court until its closure in 1935.