Calle de los Estudios

Embajadores

The street takes its name from the Casa de los Estudios, a teaching institution founded in 1569 on the side of the Jesuit plot on calle de Toledo, funded by the town of Madrid and run by the Society of Jesus. The name “del Estudio” already appears on Pedro Texeira’s map (1656); on Antonio Espinosa de los Monteros’s mapping (1769) it appears as “de San Dámaso”; and in the 19th-century street register it settled as “de los Estudios”, the form that has reached us today.

Calle de los Estudios runs down from calle de Toledo to plaza de Cascorro, in the heart of Embajadores. It is hard to picture among the Rastro market stalls, but for two centuries this pavement flanked the town’s greatest educational machine: the Jesuits' Imperial College. In 1569 Madrid opened here the Casa de los Estudios, with free classes in Latin and rhetoric. The arrangement was an odd marriage: the Society of Jesus taught and the council paid. In 1603 the empress María of Austria left the Jesuits a fortune that founded the Imperial College, and Philip IV raised it in 1625 to Royal Studies with twenty-three subjects. The darkest episode came on 17 July 1834: a rumour spread that the Jesuits had poisoned the public fountains, and a mob stormed the college and killed seventeen of them, whose remains still rest beneath the building, today the San Isidro secondary school.
On 17 July 1834, when cholera was ravaging Madrid and rumors spread that the Jesuits had poisoned the public fountains, a mob stormed the Colegio Imperial by way of Calle de los Estudios and murdered seventeen religious. Captain General Martínez de San Martín arrived with troops half an hour later, but the slaughter continued a hand’s breadth from his presence. The remains of the victims were buried in the building’s basement and remain there: the Instituto de San Isidro — the direct successor of the college — keeps the niches in its underground galleries.

Its names

  • Calle del MataderoAnterior a 1569
  • Calle del Estudioc. 1569 – 18th century (plano Texeira, 1656)
  • Calle de San Dámasoc. 17th century – 1769 (plano Espinosa)
  • Calle de los Estudios de San Isidroc. 1770 – 19th century
  • Calle de los Estudios19th century – actualidad
Sources (10)

Crossings