Calle de la Manzana

Conde Duque·Universidad

The name preserves the memory of an apple orchard that occupied this land in the sixteenth century, owned by García de Barrionuevo de Peralta. According to the tradition recorded by Peñasco y Cambronero (1889), when the property was abandoned, neighbours quarrelled over carrying off the fruit, an episode remembered as “la pelea de la manzana” (the fight over the apple) that named the street before the name was shortened to its present form.

Anyone strolling today along calle de la Manzana (Apple Street), in the Universidad quarter, expects to find the reason for such a sweet name. The street was already laid out before 1656, when Texeira drew it on his map. In the eighteenth century its character changed: the end touching San Bernardo drew minor nobility, and on the block it forms with calle de los Reyes a palace was built that today houses the Ministry of Justice. In the nineteenth century the street smelled of ink. A cluster of print workshops turned it into a small publishing axis of the quarter, with presses at numbers 3, 7 and 14.

Its names

  • Calle de la Pelea de la Manzana16th-17th centuries (fecha exacta no documentada)
  • Calle de la ManzanaAntes de 1656 – actualidad
Sources (8)

Crossings