Calle del Carmen

Calle del Carmen runs down from Puerta del Sol to Plaza del Callao, hugging Preciados and always in its shadow. For centuries it was the quieter street, the one taken by those after churches rather than shops. The Carmelite convent that gave it its name rose on a plot with a bad reputation: a brothel had stood there, which Philip II ordered moved and torn down in 1541. The new church held its first mass in 1575. The 1836 disentailment secularised the friars and the convent was eventually demolished over the 19th century. Of that complex, only the church of Nuestra Señora del Carmen y San Luis survives, at number 10, the last witness of the convent that named the street. The street was pedestrianised in the 1990s.