Calle de Santa Isabel

The calle de Santa Isabel runs gently downhill from the Plaza de Antón Martín to the Glorieta del Emperador Carlos V, parallel to calle de Atocha and marking the border between the Barrio de las Letras and Lavapiés. Before it had a name, it was the path that skirted the pleasure estate of Antonio Pérez, the all-powerful secretary of Philip II. With false modesty he called it his “little house”, though it had four towers, gardens and orchards. The name came from a move. In 1610 Queen Margaret of Austria transferred the Recollect Augustinian nuns to the site of that house confiscated from Antonio Pérez and renamed the whole complex Santa Isabel. The street kept that name and never let it go. Then came its medical vocation: Charles III commissioned Sabatini to build a colossal General Hospital, never finished, which since 1988 has housed the Reina Sofía Museum, facing the street with its side wall. Hard to imagine today, but the street had no exit to the south until 1882: it ended against the wall of the San Carlos college, until the final stretch was cut through towards Atocha. In the 20th century came the Doré cinema, today the Spanish Film Archive, and the Antón Martín market.