Calle del Conde Duque

Conde Duque·Universidad

The name refers to a double noble title — count and duke at once — tied to the plot on which Philip V ordered the barracks of the Guardias de Corps built in 1717. Which figure exactly gives the street its name is disputed among three candidates: the Count-Duke of Olivares (favourite of Philip IV), the Count of Miranda and Duke of Peñaranda, and the 3rd Duke of Berwick and Liria, Count of Lemos.

Almost the entire west front of Calle del Conde Duque is taken up by a single building, and what a building: the Conde Duque barracks, the largest baroque structure in Madrid, with a 228-metre frontage and a churrigueresque doorway attributed to Pedro de Ribera. The street runs downhill through the Universidad quarter and inherited its name from that great mass. Philip V signed the order to build it on 4 November 1717, to house the six hundred guards and four hundred horses of the Royal Guards of the Corps. The works dragged on for decades and the chapel was not finished until 1754. Through the 19th century the barracks was an academy, an observatory, a political prison and an optical telegraph hub; two military uprisings set out from its courtyards. A fire devoured the upper floors in 1869. The army left it in 1969, and since 1981 it has been the largest cultural centre of the Madrid City Council, its original volumes restored in the 2011 works.

Its names

  • Calle de San Juan BautistaAnterior a 1656
  • Calle de San Benito / San Joaquín / del Medio CuartilloSiglo 17th – principios del 18th
  • Calle del Conde Duquec. 1720 en adelante
Sources (10)

Crossings