Calle de San Felipe Neri

The site of this short street had been occupied since 1627 by the Jesuits' Professed House, whose church held two Baroque treasures: a recumbent Christ by Gregorio Fernández and a penitent Magdalene by Pedro de Mena, both now in Valladolid. With the Society’s expulsion in 1767, Charles III gave the building to the Filippini fathers, who set up the Royal Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, the saint who names the street. The 1836 dissolution swept it all away. In 1839 the Pasaje de San Felipe Neri rose here, Madrid’s first covered arcade, with Neo-Gothic and Neo-Mudéjar ornament, a roofed market and even a Russian bathhouse. The arcade was short-lived: around 1864 its owners sought a demolition permit for tenement housing. Over that gap the present street was left open, barely sixty metres linking the Calle Mayor with the calle de las Fuentes.