Calle de la Redondilla
The name refers to an open, rounded clearing—popularly called “la Redondilla”—that tradition says closed off the walk at the end of this street during the fifteenth century. The alternative version, more literary in flavour, derives it from the nickname of a woman known as “Paca la Redondilla”. Both hypotheses are set in the reign of Henry IV (1454–1474), but no source backs them with archival documentation.
If you go down from the costanilla de San Andrés toward calle de Don Pedro, you cross a street born in two stages, nearly a century and a quarter apart. Calle de la Redondilla begins beside the plaza de la Paja, in the Palacio quarter, within what was once the Morería.
Around 1490, Pedro de Castilla ceded part of his palace houses to open a first stretch that ended against the medieval wall. In 1611, once that wall was pulled down, the Council ordered the street extended to calle de Don Pedro, joining the Morería with the convent of San Francisco.
The street holds two buildings worth a stop: at number 10 survives a sixteenth-century “casa a la malicia”, and at number 13 stands the oldest known corrala (tenement) in Madrid, built by the Duke of Infantado in 1711 to plans by Teodoro Ardemans.
Its names
- Calle tras las casas de don Pedro de CastillaSiglo 15th (h. 1490)
- Calle Nueva de la AlcantarillaSiglo 17th (1611 o anterior)
- Calle de la RedondillaSiglo 17th (fecha exacta no documentada) – actualidad
Sources (8)
- Wikipedia — Calle de la Redondilla
- Arte en Madrid — Calle de la Redondilla nº 10
- Por las calles de Madrid — Calle de la Redondilla
- Sebastián Navarrete — Historias de las calles de Madrid: Redondilla
- El anciano rey de los vinos — La corrala más antigua de Madrid
- Ediciones La Librería — Las corralas más antiguas de Madrid
- Biblioteca Virtual Cervantes — Las dichosas faldas (Carlos Arniches)
- Memoria de Madrid — María Zambrano