Calle de Santa Casilda

Behind the sign is a princess who hid bread in her skirt. Casilda was born in Muslim Toledo in the 11th century, daughter of a taifa king, and took pity on the Christian captives languishing in her father’s dungeons. She would slip down to see them and bring them food. One afternoon her father surprised her and asked what she was hiding in her lap. She answered: flowers. When she opened her dress, tradition says, the bread had turned into a bunch of roses. The episode was remembered as the miracle of the roses. Gravely ill, Casilda sought relief at the wells of San Vicente, near Briviesca. She was healed there, was baptized, and spent the rest of her long life as a hermit. Her sanctuary is still a place of pilgrimage, and she is venerated as patron of the Bureba region. Why the Imperial neighborhood’s streets chose her name has not survived in any record.