Calle de la Loma

The name describes what the walker still feels in the legs. A loma is a low, rounded rise, elongated like an animal’s back, and that is where the word comes from, the feminine of lomo. Before Chamberí was covered in regular blocks, this strip north of Madrid was rolling country, with gentle climbs that locals named for what they saw. The Vallehermoso district grew slowly over that broken ground, held back in part by the old northern cemeteries that took up much of this land. The Calle de la Loma keeps that geographic memory, that of a knoll the asphalt leveled but not entirely: whoever walks it is still climbing. Barely one hundred and fifty-four meters, a modest slope and a word that recurs across Madrid’s street map, because there were many lomas and nearly all ended up under the houses.