Calle de la Magdalena

Lavapiés·Embajadores

The name comes from the convent of Augustinian nuns founded in the sixteenth century over an earlier hermitage dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene, at the eastern end of the street beside Calle de Atocha. The hermitage was the first landmark; the convent, built in 1579 by the merchant Baltasar Gómez de Mesa at the urging of Blessed Alonso de Orozco, fixed the place name. The complex was demolished in 1836, but the saint’s name survived in the street.

Before there was a street there was a path through esparto fields and olive groves, running from the old town to a small hermitage dedicated to the Magdalene. From that path toward the countryside comes today’s calle de la Magdalena, which descends some four hundred metres eastward from plaza de Tirso de Molina to calle de Atocha. The convent of Augustinian nuns that fixed the name stretched its building as far as the old hermitage road and lent it its dedication. It was suppressed in the 1836 disentailment. At number 10, Pedro de Ribera raised the palace of the Marquises of Perales around 1731, today the Spanish Film Archive. The street’s bloodiest episode happened there: on 1 December 1808, with the French coming down through Somosierra, the people opened the cartridges handed out to defend the city and found sand where the gunpowder should have been. The mob blamed the marquis, owner of a nearby cartridge factory, stormed the palace and killed him at the age of forty-two.

Its names

  • Camino de la Magdalena / Calle de la MagdalenaSiglo 16th (documentado desde la fundación del convento, c. 1579)
  • Calle de la Magdalena (tramo reducido tras apertura de la plaza)Primer tercio del 19th century (c. 1838-1840)
Sources (10)

Crossings