Calle de Jesús y María

The street runs down from plaza de Tirso de Molina to calle de Lavapiés and calle de San Carlos, in Embajadores, and already appears by name on the 1656 and 1769 maps. Its houses once held a shrine devoted to Jesus and Mary, linked to a brotherhood of the convent of San Francisco. That confraternity carried the Stations of the Cross on the Fridays of Lent, climbing to a calvary that stood alongside, where calle del Calvario now runs; the shrine was one of the stops along the way. A second version tells that the water-carriers' guild bought an image of the Flight into Egypt and set it in a chapel of their own under the same dedication. Both point to the same image of the two figures. These slopes were full of taverns, inns and eating houses: a district of artisans and trades. The oddest fact of the street registry: before the council regularised names in 1835, Madrid had two other streets with this same name, until rationalisation left only this one.