Calle de San Bernabé
The name refers to the apostle Barnabas, companion of Paul of Tarsus on his mission and a figure honoured in the liturgical calendar on 11 June. Streets in Habsburg-era Madrid usually took their name from the nearest object of devotion, whether a hermitage, chapel or neighbourhood image. No consulted source documents a hermitage or chapel expressly dedicated to Saint Barnabas on this stretch, but the naming pattern and the age of the name —attested at least since the 17th century— point to a local devotion predating the VOT Hospital, built on the street from 1679.
Calle de San Bernabé runs down between the Gran Vía de San Francisco and the junction of Calle de la Ventosa with the Cuesta de las Descargas, in the Palacio district. It is barely 172 metres long, yet it holds the oldest working hospital in Madrid.
On the site of the houses of Baltasar Gil Imón —where in 1624 the third Duke of Osuna died a prisoner— the Franciscan Venerable Third Order built, between 1679 and 1697, the hospital still in use today. The chapel was consecrated in 1699 and the work cost 624,000 reales, with the backing of Charles II.
The building, a listed Cultural Heritage Site since 1995, arranges its interior around a square courtyard and holds works by Juan Carreño de Miranda and paintings attributed to Van Dyck. The lay order that founded it gathered a roster hard to beat: among its tertiaries were Lope de Vega, Calderón, Quevedo and Cervantes.
Its names
- Calle de San Bernabé17th century - actualidad
Sources (8)
- El Antiguo Madrid (tomo II) — Mesonero Romanos, Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
- Hospital de la Venerable Orden Tercera — Wikipedia
- Portillo de Gilimón — Wikipedia
- Baltasar Gil Imón de la Mota — Wikipedia
- Hospital VOT — Historia oficial (hospitalvot.org)
- Capilla del Hospital de la VOT — Turismo Madrid (esmadrid.com)
- Historia Urbana de Madrid: las hijas de Gil Imón
- Placas de Madrid: Historia de las calles 2, Carrera de San Francisco (context urbano)