Calle de la Esgrima

Lavapiés·Embajadores

The name recalls a courtyard where a fencing master set up his school in the seventeenth century, after being evicted from the neighbouring yard that would name Calle de la Espada. The owner of the new space, a book dealer, rented it to him for twenty ducats a year. The bustle of pupils and of onlookers who came to watch the bouts fixed the name in the neighbourhood’s speech before it was ever recorded in any register.

Between the corridor of Embajadores and the heart of Lavapiés slips a pedestrian lane barely two hundred metres long. It starts at Calle de Jesús y María and ends at Calle del Mesón de Paredes. Its name honours no illustrious neighbour: it recalls a school of arms that operated here in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, when learning to handle a sword was a serious, regulated affair. The master taught the Verdadera Destreza, the Spanish fencing system perfected by Luis Pacheco de Narváez, chief master to Philip IV. He was no minor swordsman: his pupils included pages of the Duke of Lerma. On feast days the courtyard opened to anyone wishing to watch practice bouts, until a duel ended in a death and entry had to be limited to the enrolled. La Esgrima does not stand alone: a few metres away is its sister, Calle de la Espada. Same origin, same master, same era; only what they name differs, the weapon in one and the art in the other.

Its names

  • Calle de la Esgrima17th century – actualidad
Sources (7)

Crossings