Calle de los Cañizares

Lavapiés·Embajadores

The name comes from the reed beds (cañizares) that covered this area before it was built up. Among the landowners was Juan Antonio de Luján, lord of Almarza, and his estate was popularly known as “Los Cañizares”. When the street was formalised, in the 18th century, the place name passed to it.

A street opened between Atocha and the Magdalena, some 150 metres in Embajadores, over what were once riverside orchards south of medieval Madrid. Olive groves and reed beds grew there, and from those thick reeds comes the name: a cañizar is a dense reed plantation. The estate of Juan Antonio de Luján, lord of Almarza, was known by that name even before the street existed. It was not always so called. On Texeira’s map (1656) it appears as calle de San Sebastián, after the nearby church. It should not be confused with the calle de Cañizares in the Universidad neighbourhood, which refers to the playwright José de Cañizares. In so few metres two notable churches gather: the Oratory of the Santo Cristo del Olivar, dating from 1608, and, bordering it behind, the vanished Convent of the Magdalena, founded in 1560 among the same olive groves that gave the street its name.

Its names

  • Calle de San SebastiánAnterior a 1656 — h. 1769
  • Calle de los Cañizaresh. 1769 — actualidad
Sources (7)

Crossings