Calle de Juan Bautista de Toledo

The name pays tribute to Juan Bautista de Toledo, the architect who gave shape to the most ambitious building of Philip II’s reign. Born around 1515, he trained in Renaissance Italy. In Rome he worked alongside Michelangelo on the basilica of St Peter’s, and there he was known as Giovanni Battista. He then moved to Naples in the service of the viceroy, where he raised bastions and opened the great avenue that still cuts the city from side to side. Philip II summoned him to Spain in 1559 and named him his chief architect. To him is owed the master plan of El Escorial, the severe grid of courtyards and the very idea of a monastery that would be palace, pantheon and library all at once. He died in Madrid in 1567, long before the work was finished; its completion fell to his pupil Juan de Herrera, whose name ended up eclipsing that of the master who had conceived it. The calle de Juan Bautista de Toledo, in the Prosperidad neighbourhood, restores his memory. Anyone who walks it recalls the man whose Latin signature was set into the foundation stone of El Escorial: Joannes Baptista architectus major.