Calle de San Pedro Mártir

The name of the calle de San Pedro Mártir, in the Embajadores quarter, recalls no convent that ever stood here. The origin is more tangled: a house on this side of the street belonged to Dr. Agreda, a canon of Toledo, who on his death left it to the convent of San Pedro Mártir in that city. The Toledan Dominicans, now the owners, fixed an effigy of the saint on the façade, and from seeing it so often the neighbours ended up naming the street. The saint was Peter of Verona (1205-1252), a Dominican friar and inquisitor, killed with an axe on the road between Como and Milan. His canonisation came barely three hundred and thirty-seven days later: the fastest the Church records. The street holds two strong stories. In 1821 Matías Vinuesa, the Priest of Tamajón, lived at number 2, accused of conspiring to restore absolute power to Ferdinand VII; on 4 May a mob broke into the Corona prison and finished him off with hammers a few metres from his home. And in 1897 a sixteen-year-old newly arrived from Málaga, studying at San Fernando, lodged in a boarding house at number 5: Pablo Picasso. In 1981 Lola Gil painted four tile murals on the façade to mark his centenary.