Calle de los Jardines
The name comes from the Italian-style gardens promoted by Jacobo de Grattis, a knight from Modena who came to Madrid as secretary to the apostolic nuncio of Gregory XIII in the time of Philip II. The properties he acquired and worked on this stretch included houses with orchards and Italian gardens that gave the street its popular name. The street already appears under this name on the maps of Texeira (1656) and Espinosa (1769), showing the name was well established before either cartographer drew his map.
Calle de los Jardines runs between calle de la Montera and calle de los Peligros, in the heart of Sol, pressed between the Gran Vía and the start of Alcalá. Much underground water runs beneath it, and that made it, for nearly three centuries, the bathhouse street of Madrid.
It all began in 1628, when the Italian Domingo Lapuente obtained a royal licence to open a bathhouse. The neighbours called it the Priest’s Baths, and from then on such establishments followed one another almost without interruption for three hundred years.
The episode worth knowing happens at number 3. On 9 October 1979 that doorway opened as a concert hall named El Sol; Nacha Pop inaugurated it premiering “Chica de ayer”, and the venue became one of the hearts of the Movida. Three centuries of bathers and, in the end, a street that ended up singing.
Its names
- Calle de los JardinesAnterior a 1656 – actualidad
Sources (7)
- Calle de los Jardines – Wikipedia
- Las casas de baños en la Calle de los Jardines – antiguoscafesdemadrid.com
- Sala El Sol – Wikipedia
- Sala El Sol – Historia oficial
- Caballero de Gracia, de la leyenda al Oratorio – Cosas de los Madriles
- Jacobo de Grattis – Real Academia de la Historia (Historia Hispánica)
- Peñasco de la Puente, H. y Cambronero, C. (1889). Las calles de Madrid – BNE Digital