Calle de Pizarro

Malasaña·Universidad

It bears the surname Pizarro after the land that Philip IV granted in this area to the Extremaduran Francisco Fernández Pizarro, Marquis of la Conquista from 1631 and a descendant of the conqueror of Peru, as recorded by Antonio Capmany. When in 1835 the magistrate Joaquín Vizcaíno Martínez (widowed Marquis of Pontejos) reorganised the street map and removed duplicate names, the council chose the former landowner’s second surname to rename the street until then called de la Magdalena Alta.

Calle de Pizarro runs between Calle del Pez and Calle de la Luna, in the heart of the Universidad district. It already existed in the Madrid that Teixeira drew in 1656. Its first documented name was Magdalena Alta, after a 17th-century refuge house that barely lasted eighteen months; the name held for two centuries. In 1835 the Marquis of Pontejos reformed the street map and the street became de Pizarro. The same reorganisation renamed Magdalena Baja as Hernán Cortés, a sign of the wish to fill the map with conquistadors. Number 19, on the corner with Pez, occupied a palace where the Marquis of Cerralbo began gathering the collection that today forms the Cerralbo Museum. Number 14 is the building that most draws the passer-by’s eye: the former Casa de los Tradicionalistas, of 1910-1912, with Viennese Secession on the ground floor and neo-Gothic windows. Today it is a hostel, its original façade intact.

Its names

  • Calle de la Magdalena AltaSiglo 17th – 1835
  • Calle de Pizarro1835 – actualidad
Sources (8)

Crossings