Calle de Felipe IV

The calle de Felipe IV was laid out in the 19th century over what was once one of the most ambitious palace complexes of the Spanish monarchy. There stood the Palace of Buen Retiro, the second royal residence that Philip IV ordered built from 1630 on the grounds of the Prado de San Jerónimo. The Count-Duke of Olivares pushed the works forward, more than twenty buildings that added up to a palace, a theatre, gardens and a pond. The king’s death in 1665 began the site’s decline, and the Napoleonic wars razed much of what remained. Philip IV reigned from 1621, at the height of the Golden Age, the years of Calderón, Tirso and Velázquez, and that same reign absorbed the defeat at Rocroi and the revolts of Portugal and Catalonia. The street runs between the paseo del Prado and the calle de Alfonso XII. On its north side a side door leads into the Prado Museum; on the south it skirts the Casón del Buen Retiro. At number 4 stands, since the late 19th century, the seat of the Royal Spanish Academy, inaugurated in 1894 by the regent María Cristina.