Calle de Ponciano
The street takes its name from Ponciano de Olivares, keeper of the royal hunting preserve that once occupied this land on the north-western outskirts of Madrid. The name, passed down by Pedro de Répide in his Calles de Madrid, keeps only the man’s first name, which for centuries caused confusion with the 19th-century sculptor Ponciano Ponzano —creator of the lions at Congress— a coincidence of names with no family tie or honorary intent.
A narrow street in the Universidad district, right in Conde Duque, Calle de Ponciano begins at Calle de San Bernardino and ends a few metres later at Travesía del Conde Duque. It is one of the minor lines in the grid laid out north-west of the wall when Philip V expanded the town.
Hard to imagine today, but this land was for centuries a royal hunting wood. In 1566 the Franciscan convent of San Bernardino was founded there, so far from the centre it does not even appear on Texeira’s 1656 map. From that convent the neighbouring street to the north, the old Calle de San Bernardino, took its name. The current name was set on 1 November 1835, in the Marquis of Pontejos’s great renaming reform.
And here the ear can mislead. Anyone reading Ponciano will think of Calle de Ponzano, which does owe its name to the sculptor Ponciano Ponzano, creator of the reliefs at Congress. The two streets have nothing to do with each other: they share only a phonetic echo.
Its names
- Calle de San Bernardino (tramo)c. 1656
- Calle de Ponciano1 de noviembre de 1835
Sources (7)
- Wikidata: calle de Ponciano (Q29838517)
- Caminando por Madrid — La calle de Ponciano
- Somos Malasaña / eldiario.es — Ponciano y Dos Amigos, calles que también importan
- Wikipedia — Convento de San Bernardino (Madrid)
- Wikipedia — Calle de San Bernardino
- Pedro de Répide, Las calles de Madrid (ed. La Librería, 2011; orig. 1920-1925)
- Madridcanalla — Quién es quién en las calles de Madrid: Ponciano / Ponzano