Calle de los Cipreses

The cypress gives its name to this street in the Nueva España district of Chamartín. There is no record of the exact reason or the date it was named, so the name stays as what it says: a tree. The common cypress reached the peninsula with the Phoenicians and Romans, who planted it beside temples and graves. It grows narrow and very tall, an almost black-green column that can rise over twenty metres and live for centuries. That vertical silhouette, which casts no wide shade but plenty of presence, made it the tree of cemeteries and cloisters: it was said its roots run straight down, without disturbing the neighbouring graves, and that its wood does not rot. In Madrid the cypress is a feature of old walls and old gardens. Anyone walking la calle de los Cipreses passes through a part of the northern city that in the 20th century filled with quiet residential estates, where the names of plants and places gave the new streets a touch of the countryside.