Calle de San Cristóbal
The street takes its name from a small chapel with an image of Saint Christopher that stood in a farmstead outside the Puerta de Guadalajara, before the growing town absorbed it into the commercial fabric behind the Calle Mayor. Pedro de Répide records this attribution in “Las calles de Madrid”.
In the heart of the old commercial maze behind the Calle Mayor, the calle de San Cristóbal runs barely 124 metres between the Plaza de Santa Cruz and the Calle de Postas. Mesonero Romanos described this weave of packed little streets crammed with shops, with a density he compared to the Alcaicería of Granada.
After the Plaza Mayor fire of 1790, Juan de Villanueva tried to bring order to the tangle, unifying arcades and façades along the whole axis; local resistance left the plan half done.
The saint who names it carried an enviable résumé: patron of travellers, sailors and drivers. In 1970 Rome dropped him from the universal calendar, judging his legend of limited acceptance. Popular devotion never noticed, and kept turning to him as always.
Its names
- Capilla extramuros de la Puerta de Guadalajara15th century (tradición recogida por Mesonero Romanos, 1861)
- Calle de San Cristóbal16th century en adelante (figura ya integrada en el casco urbano)
- Incluida en el plan Villanueva1790-1791
Sources (5)
- Por las calles de Madrid — Calle de San Cristóbal (blog con cita a Répide)
- El antiguo Madrid — Paseos histórico-anecdóticos (Mesonero Romanos, 1861), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
- Pasión por Madrid — Los soportales de la Calle Mayor (plan Villanueva)
- Madrid Antiguo — entredosamores.es (ermita siglo XV)
- Mirador Madrid — Puerta de Guadalajara en Calle Mayor