Calle del Biombo

A narrow, discreet street of the Palacio quarter behind calle Mayor, calle del Biombo runs east to west from plaza del Biombo to calle del Factor, winding along the north side of San Nicolás de los Servitas, the oldest standing church in Madrid. The name is old: it appears on Texeira’s 1656 map and reads the same, unchanged, on Espinosa’s of 1769. Back then it was not a street but a tangle of crooked alleys skirting the rear wall of the Convent of Constantinople, founded in 1469 and moved to Madrid in 1551. Mendizábal’s confiscation expelled the nuns in 1836 and, when the labyrinth was tidied, the street kept the layout walked today. And a record to share on the way out: the travesía del Biombo, which begins at plaza de San Nicolás and ends at calle del Biombo, measures 14.25 metres. It is the shortest street in all Madrid according to the official register, appearing in it since 11 January 1835.