Calle de Villanueva
The street bears the name of Juan de Villanueva (Madrid, 1739–1811), the Neoclassical architect who designed the Prado Museum, the Royal Astronomical Observatory and the rebuilding of the Plaza Mayor after the fire of 1790. The street was laid out in the Castro Ensanche (1860); its western stretch took the site of the old hamlet of Valnegral.
A street dedicated to Juan de Villanueva, the Madrid architect who was born in 1739 and gave shape to Enlightenment Madrid. He trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando and spent seven years on a grant in Italy. Charles III named him architect to the Princes and Infantes in 1777, and under Charles IV he took charge of the royal works. His mark still defines the Paseo del Prado: he raised the building that now houses the Prado Museum, commissioned in 1785 as a Natural History Cabinet, along with the Astronomical Observatory and the entrance to the Botanical Garden.
Calle de Villanueva was born with the Ensanche that Carlos María de Castro planned, approved in 1860. The first stretch, from Recoletos to Velázquez, opened over the old hamlet of Valnegral and bordered the garden walls of the Palacio de Santoña. The eastern stretch was built over the vanished Jardines Elíseos.
At number 18 survives a small palace that Cristóbal Lecumberri designed around 1870, the only one left of the single-family villas that the Marquis of Salamanca raised in the area. And where the building at number 2 now stands was the Frontón Recoletos, inaugurated in 1936 by Secundino Zuazo and Eduardo Torroja, demolished in 1973.
Its names
- Calle del TostadoAnterior al Ensanche (mediados 19th century)
- Calle de LliviaAnterior al Ensanche (mediados 19th century)