Calle de Ponzano

Behind the sign of Madrid’s most famous food street there is a chisel. The street honors Ponciano Ponzano y Gascón (Zaragoza, 1813 — Madrid, 1877), a neoclassical sculptor trained at the San Fernando academy and later in Rome. He created the pediment of the Congress of Deputies, but his most recognizable work is the pair of bronze beasts that watch over its staircase: they were cast from the metal of cannons taken in the 1860 African campaign. The irony is that the sculptor now lends his surname to a colloquial verb. Since the 2010s the street has filled with bars and tables, above all around Ríos Rosas, until “going out on Ponzano” came to mean a crawl of beers and tapas. Ponzano begins at Santa Engracia and ends at Raimundo Fernández Villaverde, a kilometer of pavement where a 19th-century sculptor gives his name to the after-lunch drink.