Calle de Medellín

The name travels to a town in the province of Badajoz, overlooking the Guadiana beneath a medieval castle. There, around 1485, Hernán Cortés was born, the conqueror of the Mexica empire, and for that birthplace Calle de Medellín entered the streets of Madrid. The town’s name is older than its most famous son. In Roman times it was called Metellinum, tied to the consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus, and from that root came Medellín. The town preserves a Roman theater and centuries of military traces. In Madrid the street is modest. It runs barely a hundred meters through the Trafalgar district and links Calle de Viriato with Calle de García de Paredes. It was opened during the 19th-century expansion, when Chamberí was ceasing to be an outlying quarter to become a proper district.