Calle del Duque de Osuna

Conde Duque·Universidad

The street is named after the palace that the ducal House of Osuna owned at this end of the old Calle de Leganitos. Juan Téllez-Girón, 4th Duke of Osuna, bought the property in 1629, and it remained the dynasty’s main Madrid residence for almost two centuries. The name “calle del Duque de Osuna” already appears on the Espinosa de los Monteros map (1769) and on Tomás López’s map (1785), where the estate is listed among the “Houses of the Grandees.”

This street’s name traveled. The palace that gave it its name stood at the upper end of the old calle de Leganitos, where Juan Téllez-Girón, 4th Duke of Osuna, bought most of a block in 1629 and built his residence. For nearly two centuries it housed the largest private library in eighteenth-century Madrid, with 60,000 volumes by around 1834. When calle de la Princesa was laid out, its first stretch absorbed the route that ran past the ducal palace. The name was left stranded and ended up attached to a leftover piece of old Leganitos, cut off and on a different level. Anyone walking today along calle del Duque de Osuna, between calle de la Princesa and plaza de Cristino Martos, is on a street that inherited the name, not the one that first bore it.

Its names

  • Calle Alta de Leganitos (tramo)Anterior a 1769
  • Calle del Duque de Osuna (primera denominación documentada)1769 – ca. 1865
  • Absorbida por la calle de la Princesa1865
  • Calle del Duque de Osuna (denominación desplazada al tramo actual)Ca. 1865 – actualidad
Sources (7)

Crossings