Calle de la Villa

Los Austrias·Palacio

The name comes from the contraction of “calle del Estudio de la Villa”, as it appears on Teixeira’s map (1656). The reference is the Public Humanities School of the Town of Madrid, a municipal teaching institution that occupied number 2 of the street from 1549. In 1835, with the systematic labeling of Madrid’s streets, the shortened form we still use was adopted.

A short, steep slope runs down between the Plaza de la Cruz Verde and the Pretil de los Consejos, in the Habsburg quarter. Behind its now bland name beats one of Madrid’s most literary corners: here the young Miguel de Cervantes studied. At number 2 stood the Public Humanities School that the Council of Madrid maintained with municipal funds. The school went far back —⁠Alfonso XI founded it in 1346⁠— and reached its golden age under Juan López de Hoyos, who ran the classrooms when, around 1567, a teenage Cervantes passed through them. Two years later, López de Hoyos published several compositions by his pupil: the first documentary proof that Cervantes set foot in those classrooms. The school was dismantled in 1619 and the building was eventually torn down. The name took time to settle: 17th-century maps label it at length, the 1769 map shortens it to calle del Estudio, and the current one was fixed in 1835.

Its names

  • Calle del Estudio de la Villac. 1622 – c. 1769
  • Calle del Estudioc. 1769 – 1835
  • Calle de la Villa1835 – actualidad
Sources (9)

Crossings