Calle de Madrid

Beside Plaza de la Villa, where Madrid kept its municipal heart before Philip II brought the court in 1561, there is a street that bears the name of the whole city and measures barely a few paces. Calle de Madrid links Calle del Duque de Nájera with that square and vies with Calle de Rompelanzas for the title of shortest street in the old town. The paradox fascinated 19th-century chroniclers: an alley so narrow that no doorway opened onto it and no carriage fit down its cobbles bore the name of the city. It belongs to the town’s oldest core, alongside the Codo and Cordón streets, of medieval layout. The gesture that changed it forever came in the 20th century: the architect Luis Bellido raised over it, between 1910 and 1914, a Plateresque elevated passageway linking the Casa de Cisneros with the Casa de la Villa. Today the street is that archway, with no doorways of its own.