Calle de Titulcia
The street takes its name from the town of Titulcia, in Madrid’s Las Vegas region, some 41 km southeast of the capital. The place name comes from the Roman mansio recorded in the Antonine Itinerary. The town was called Bayona de Tajuña from the 12th century until 1814, when Ferdinand VII restored the Roman name by royal decree.
Titulcia, today a small town on the edge of the Las Vegas region, lends its name to this calle de Titulcia in the Niño Jesús district. The real place sits where the Jarama and the Tajuña rivers meet, and that crossing made it, even before the Romans, an obligatory point on the roads. The Antonine Itinerary records it as a resting stop on two routes of the network linking Emérita Augusta with Caesaraugusta.
In 2009 the old oppidum gave back one of its secrets: the Patera of Titulcia, a silver and gold piece dated between the 4th and 3rd centuries BC.
After the Arab conquest the settlement was called Bayona de Tajuña. It kept that name until 1814, when Ferdinand VII signed the decree restoring the Roman one. The move is said to have sought to erase the echo of Bayonne, the French city where the king had abdicated in Napoleon’s favor. The origin of the Roman name itself remains unclear, and the date the Madrid street was named has not survived either.