Calle del Azulejo

Fuente del Berro

A street of about 63 metres in the Fuente del Berro neighbourhood (Salamanca district, postcode 28028), running between Paseo del Marqués de Zafra and Calle del Vizconde de Matamala. The city’s official street register lists it under code 86800, with no historical note or approval date. No source documents the specific reference behind the name.

The Calle del Azulejo is a small scrap of city born on the edge of the Ensanche Este, when Madrid was spilling eastward in the early decades of the 20th century. Just two doorways, numbers 2 and 4, mark its course. On the edges of the Ensanche, minor streets were usually named without ceremony, borrowing the vocabulary of the building site: the materials and trades of those who were putting up the neighbourhood. From that repertoire came the azulejo, the glazed ceramic tile that lines façades and entrance halls. No one signed a naming record; the name is thought to have settled between 1900 and 1940, taken from one of the materials the surrounding neighbourhood was made of.
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