Calle de las Veneras
The name comes from the houses that Alonso Muriel y Valdivieso, secretary to Prince Philip from 1592 and later to the general office of Philip III, owned here with his wife Catalina de Medina. The façades were decorated with small stone scallop shells (veneras), which led people to call the houses, and later the street, “de las Veneras”. The name predates Texeira’s map (1656), where the street already existed in the district between the monastery of Santo Domingo and San Martín.
A stretch of barely 87 metres linking calle de las Conchas with plaza de Santo Domingo, in the medieval core that grew north of Habsburg Madrid.
A “venera” is the scallop shell, emblem of the pilgrims to Santiago. In the 16th century it was carved on façades and coats of arms as a mark of prestige among the nobility and senior court officials. The neighbouring calle de las Conchas was born of the same impulse.
On the corner with Preciados stood the “casa de las Parrillas”, which Queen María Amalia, Ferdinand VII’s third wife, left to the monastery of El Escorial to pay for yearly masses.
Its names
- Calle de las Venerasanterior a 1656
- Calle del Embajador de Francia17th century (fecha exacta no documentada)
- Calle de las Veneras19th century–actualidad
Sources (8)
- Pedro de Répide, Las calles de Madrid (ed. La Librería, 2011; orig. 1921-1925) — entrada «Veneras»
- Imágenes Antiguas de Madrid: Calle de las Veneras
- Por las calles de Madrid: Calle de las Veneras
- Mesonero Romanos, El antiguo Madrid (Cervantes Virtual, tomo I, cap. 17)
- Patrimonio y Paisaje Urbano de Madrid — Placa Rubén Darío, Calle Veneras 4
- Genealogía y poesía: los Muriel y Valdivieso (Irene Garmilla, blog)
- Rubén Darío en Madrid: bohemia, poesía y una ciudad que ya no existe (La Nación, CR)
- Wikidata Q28052653 — Calle de las Veneras (referencia al nomenclator 2012, p. 312)