Calle de la Aduana

It runs between Calle de la Montera and Calle de la Virgen de los Peligros, in the Sol quarter, and takes its name from the Royal Customs House, which closes it on the even-numbered side. The detail is telling: the street took the name when that building had gone decades without weighing goods, turned into the Treasury’s seat since 1845. It never processed a bale under that sign. Before, it was called Angosta de San Bernardo, after a Benedictine convent facing its end. It fell with Mendizábal’s disentailment, and on its site rose the Café de Fornos, heart of the city’s literary and bullfighting life between 1870 and 1908. Mesonero Romanos lived here, portraying the street without naming it in his article “My Street”. In 1944 the Customs building received the Churrigueresque doorway of the Marquis of Torrecilla’s palace, carved by Pedro de Ribera around 1730 and moved here.