Calle del Casino

El Rastro·Embajadores

The street takes its name from the estate known as the Casino de la Reina, which the Madrid City Council gave in 1817 to Elisabeth of Braganza, second wife of Ferdinand VII. The rear of the small palace faced this street, until then known as Calle del Sol. The stretch appears on the Espinosa plan (1769) without a name of its own, as a continuation of Calle del Tribulete. The present name took hold around 1835.

Calle del Casino slopes down from Calle de Embajadores to the Ribera de Curtidores, extending Calle del Tribulete. It is so short that for over a century it barely existed as a street of its own: on the old plans it appears unnamed or absorbed into the Tribulete. The name came from a small palace we can no longer see. After the French left, the City Council bought the land in 1817 to give it to Elisabeth of Braganza, wife of Ferdinand VII, in celebration of her pregnancy. The architect Antonio López Aguado built a neoclassical house there, surrounded by a fairy-tale garden: a navigable channel with an island, greenhouses, an artificial grotto, a Chinese pavilion. Its rear faced what was then Calle del Sol, and that side lent its name to the stretch around 1835. Elisabeth barely enjoyed the gift: she died in 1818 in childbirth. The estate, the Casino de la Reina, was reused without pause — museum, veterinary school, secondary school — but the street keeps the name that small palace gave it.

Its names

  • Sin nombre propio (continuación de Tribulete)Anterior a 1656 – c. 1769
  • Calle del Solc. 1769 – c. 1835
  • Calle del Casinoc. 1835 – actualidad
Sources (7)

Crossings