Calle de los Milaneses

A small cross-street that climbs from Calle Mayor to Calle de Santiago, in the Palacio neighbourhood. Its course runs right along the line of the old medieval wall, and at its mouth, where it meets Calle Mayor, stood the Puerta de Guadalajara, standing until 1582. For centuries the street had no name; it waited until 1769 to be signed with the one it still keeps. The name recalls two craftsmen from Lombardy who set up their workshop here and were the first to make pocket watches in Madrid. The workshop passed down through generations to Ramón Durán, the same man who built the clock on the tower of the convent of San Gil. What stops the passer-by today is at number 3. Since 2007 a bronze sculpture by Miguel Ángel Ruiz Beato has hung from its façade, titled Air Crash: a winged man embedded head-down in the cornice, his head turned and his legs broken.