Calle del Limón

Conde Duque·Universidad

The name comes from a lemon tree that grew for a long time on the plot once occupied by the orchard of Joaquín de Peralta. When the street was opened over that ground, the tree⁠—⁠or its memory⁠—⁠was fixed in the place name. Peñasco and Cambronero documented it thus in 1889: it “took its name from a lemon tree that stood there for a long time, thanks to having been opened on ground occupied by an orchard belonging to D. Joaquín de Peralta.”

Calle del Limón runs down through the Universidad district, from calle de San Bernardino to calle de Montserrat. During the seventeenth century the Amaniel woodland retreated here as the city advanced. At the southern end, the Mahou family built in 1894 the Hijos de Casimiro Mahou brewery, a Neo-Mudéjar brick building that today houses the ABC Museum of Drawing and Illustration. The street lived surrounded by print shops, bakeries, and taverns. In one of those print shops a young Pablo Iglesias worked, later founder of the PSOE; when the owner told him to water the garden, he refused: he was a typographer, not a gardener. The barman Perico Chicote was born on these pavements in 1899. Benito Pérez Galdós left his literary mark: he opens his novel Miau (1888) with the children leaving the school in the little plazuela del Limón, right next door.

Its names

  • Calle de San Bernardino1656 (plano Texeira)
  • Calle de San Juan la Nueva1769 (plano Espinosa)
  • Calle del Limón AltaSiglo 18th-19th (fecha exacta no consta)
  • Calle del LimónSiglo 19th (fecha exacta no consta)
Sources (9)

Crossings