Calle de Eduardo Adaro

Behind this name stands the man who gave form to one of Madrid’s most recognisable buildings. Eduardo de Adaro Magro was born in Gijón in 1848 and qualified as an architect in 1872. Soon after, he joined the Bank of Spain as assistant architect, alongside the chief architect Severiano Sainz de la Lastra. That commission would take up much of his life. When his colleague died in 1884, Adaro took charge of the project for the new bank on the corner of the paseo del Prado and the calle de Alcalá, opened in 1891. Whoever looks inside today finds the material he favoured: cast iron, holding up ceilings and courtyards with a lightness that then seemed the business of engineers more than architects. Not everything was palaces of money: he designed model prisons and several provincial branches of the bank. His name ended up stitched to Bellas Vistas, far from Cibeles, on a short street almost no one connects with the dome and bronze lions that guard the national gold.