Calle de los Reyes

The most memorable thing about Calle de los Reyes isn’t its name but what lies beneath it. It runs over an old stream that Mesonero Romanos described as an open bed, crossed by a bridge near calle de Leganitos. Governor Figueroa covered the channel in the 18th century, yet the street’s crooked profile still betrays where the water once flowed. It marks the southern edge of a huge block that began as a Jesuit novitiate in 1602. When the order was expelled in 1767, the complex passed to the Crown and became one of Madrid’s intellectual hearts: here settled the Literary University brought from Alcalá, and the institute Alfonso XII renamed Cardenal Cisneros. The Machado brothers, Azaña and Fernán Gómez passed through its classrooms. Goya lived here too, owning a house from 1803 until he moved to the Quinta del Sordo on the way to San Isidro.