Calle de Rebeque
The name derives from Charles de Montmorency, Prince of Robech and of Baufremont, a Grandee of Spain of the first class from 8 April 1713. Madrileños garbled the Flemish place name “Robech” into “Rebeque”, and under that nickname it passed first to the square and then to the street.
Beside the Royal Palace, between Requena and Noblejas streets, lies a street with no doorways that is really a stairway: some twenty steps that bridge the slope of the ground.
In the 9th century this was the highest point of the Arab wall around the first Mayrit. Here opened the Puerta de la Xagra, giving onto the Manzanares meadow.
The name came later and by a domestic route. Charles de Montmorency, Prince of Robech, received the Grandeeship of Spain in 1713, lived in a great mansion in this area and died in Madrid in 1716. Madrileños struggled with the Flemish Robech and garbled it into Rebeque. That was the name first of the square and then of the stairway that replaced it. In 1809 Joseph Bonaparte demolished the whole neighbourhood to clear the western front of the Palace, and of it all only this stairway-street survived.
Its names
- Puerta de la Xagra (lugar)9th century – 1548
- Altos del Rebeque16th century – 18th century
- Plaza del Rebeque18th century – 1809
- Calle de Rebeque19th century – actualidad
Sources (8)
- Mesonero Romanos, Ramón de. El antiguo Madrid (1861) — Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
- Música y Pitanzas — La Calle de Rebeque, la Puerta de la Xagra y el Príncipe (2014)
- Arte en Madrid — Las Murallas de Madrid y los Altos de Rebeque (2013)
- El Madrid Aristócrata — La Puerta de la Sagra, el Príncipe de Robech y lugares asociados (2014)
- Fotopaseo por Madrid — Calle de Rebeque (2015)
- Paloma Torrijos — Casas y Palacios en los jardines de Lepanto y del Rebeque (2009)
- MadridArabe — Las puertas de la muralla árabe (2014)
- Genealogieonline.nl — Charles Philippe de Montmorency de Robecque (1671-1716)