Calle de Silva

Malasaña·Universidad

The name comes from two noble gentlemen, don García de Silva and don Juan de Silva, residents of the street during the reign of Philip III (1598–1621). García de Silva is identified by sources with García de Silva y Figueroa (Zafra, 1551 – at sea, 1624), a soldier, diplomat, and ambassador of Philip III to the Shah of Persia; Juan de Silva appears as a political correspondent of the Spanish court, though it is not established with certainty which Juan de Silva was the actual resident. The street has kept the name since the seventeenth century without documented interruption.

Calle de Silva owes its name to a distinguished resident: García de Silva y Figueroa, who fought in the Flanders regiments before turning to diplomacy. Philip III sent him as ambassador to Shah Abbas I of Persia. There he did something astonishing for his time: he identified the ruins of Persepolis using the classical authors, centuries before European archaeology was born, and recognized cuneiform as a writing system. He died of scurvy in the middle of the Atlantic in 1624, on his way home. The street begins at Plaza de Santo Domingo and ends at Plaza de Santa María de Soledad Torres Acosta, cut in two by the Gran Vía. Here stood the little hospital of San Martín, called La Buena Dicha, founded in 1564 to care for twelve poor sick people. In its cemetery several of the dead of 2 May 1808 rested for a time, among them Manuela Malasaña and Clara del Rey. On its plot Francisco García Nava raised, between 1914 and 1917, the church of La Buena Dicha that today occupies number 21, a blend of neo-Mudéjar and Art Nouveau.

Its names

  • Calle de SilvaSiglo 17th – actualidad
Sources (10)

Crossings