Calle de San Justo

Street of Saints Justus and Pastor, the Holy Children: two brothers from Alcalá martyred very young under Diocletian. Their cult took root here before streets had fixed names, so much so that the charter of 1202 already mentions them. The street runs east to west, from Puerta Cerrada to the plaza del Cordón; it was once a single street with the Sacramento, which locals called “the street that goes to Santa María”. The original church burned in 1690. What came after has a feature no other church in Madrid shares: the Pontifical Basilica of San Miguel, built by the Italian Giacomo Bonavía around 1746, has a concave façade, curved inward, a nod to the Baroque of Rome. Opposite the church, Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary of Philip II, lived under house arrest. And on the corner with Doctor Letamendi stood the House of Iván de Vargas, tied to the master Saint Isidore served; it was demolished without a permit in 2002 and now houses the municipal library that bears his name, with the well and a tree from the old courtyard preserved.