Calle de Felipe V

Anyone walking today along calle de Felipe V, between calle de Arrieta and plaza de Oriente, treads ground that for centuries did not exist as a street. Where the Teatro Real block now closes to the south, a maze of convents and houses once crowded together, all of it razed by Joseph Bonaparte between 1809 and 1811 to open the esplanade before the Royal Palace. Two convents, a church, fifty-six houses and six whole streets fell to the picks. The architect Narciso Pascual y Colomer arranged the surrounding squares and streets in the 1840s, and the street was named on 31 March 1848. The tribute has a deep reason: on this very site Philip V raised the Caños del Peral opera house, Madrid’s first permanent Italian opera theatre, opened in 1738 at his own initiative. It vanished to make way for the Real, but its bond with the Bourbon king survived, written into the street. After the Glorious Revolution of 1868, the revolutionary council renamed the street calle de Sorolla, in memory of the Valencian weaver executed in 1522 for leading the Germanías revolt. The Restoration brought back Philip V’s name around 1874, and it never moved again.