Calle de San Bruno

Los Austrias·Palacio

The street takes its name from Bruno of Cologne (c. 1030-1101), founder of the Carthusian order, because it once held livestock yards belonging to the Monastery of Santa María de El Paular, the first Castilian charterhouse, founded in 1390 in Rascafría. The Carthusians of El Paular kept property in Madrid to manage their affairs at Court, and those minor outbuildings in the Habsburg quarter gave rise to the dedication. On the Texeira map (1656) the street appears as “Peso de la Harina” (Flour Weighing House); on the Espinosa de los Monteros map (1769) it already bears its present name, placing the change somewhere in the 18th century.

Before it was San Bruno, this street was called Peso de la Harina, the Flour Weighing House: flour was weighed here before it went to market, a fitting trade in a quarter of inns and taverns beside the Cava Baja. In the 18th century, the fashion for tidying up street names swapped trades for saints, and flour gave way to the founder of the Carthusians. The saint was no accident. The Carthusians of El Paular kept yards and storehouses here, modest back rooms with no grand façade. There was never any statue or monument, only the order’s mark on a corner of Habsburg Madrid. Barely ninety-nine metres that bend toward Toledo. That kink is no planner’s whim: it is a street no one designed, grown over old plots and rights of way until it settled just as we walk it today.

Its names

  • Peso de la HarinaDocumentado en el plano de Texeira, 1656; probablemente anterior
  • ArcabuzSiglo 17th, fecha exacta no documentada
  • Calle de San BrunoDocumentado en el plano de Espinosa de los Monteros, 1769; fecha exacta del cambio no consta
Sources (10)

Crossings