Calle de Linneo

More than a century ago the Imperial district gathered several men of science on its signs, and among them stayed the Swedish naturalist Carl von Linné, Latinized as Carolus Linnaeus and Hispanized as Linneo. Born in 1707, he devoted his life to ordering the living world: he traveled, gathered plants and ended up imposing a system we still use. His idea was to give each species a two-word Latin name, the genus capitalized and the epithet in lowercase. From it came, among thousands, a label that includes us: Homo sapiens. Before him, creatures were described with long, shifting phrases; with his method two terms sufficed to identify each one without confusion. The street was not always so named. In early 1882 it appeared as Españoleto, after the painter José de Ribera, and a few weeks later the City Council changed the sign to the naturalist’s. The street runs between Segovia and Ruy González de Clavijo.