Calle de San Vicente Ferrer

Between Fuencarral and Amaniel, a little over seven hundred metres cross the Universidad district from east to west. The name recalls Saint Vincent Ferrer, once honoured by a wayside shrine here, though the saint never set foot in Madrid. Born in Valencia in 1350, he spent twenty years crossing half of Europe as a Dominican preacher. He preached in Valencian, yet the witnesses at his canonization swore that every listener understood him in his own tongue. His cult reached the town along the friars' routes. The neighbourhood formed in the seventeenth century on the outskirts, among orchards and private gardens; its eastern stretch appeared on old maps as calle de los Siete Jardines (Street of the Seven Gardens). From that came the nickname of the nearby Palacio de Parcent, the “House of the Seven Gardens”. In the nineteenth century the street filled with shops, and tiled signs still survive on the façades, like those of the old Juanse pharmacy. At number 32 the writer Rosa Chacel lived as a child, drawing from that corner her novel Barrio de Maravillas.