Calle del Maestro Victoria

Sol

The street takes its name from Tomás Luis de Victoria (Ávila, c. 1548 – Madrid, 27 August 1611), a Renaissance composer of sacred music who lived and died in the Casa de los Capellanes, a building adjoining the convent of the Descalzas Reales on this same street. Madrid’s city council dedicated the street to him in 1941, forty years after placing a plaque on the site of the old Casa de Capellanes.

A street dedicated to Tomás Luis de Victoria, one of the great figures of Renaissance music, who lived and died at this spot in Habsburg Madrid. Before settling here, around 1596, Victoria had served seventeen years as chaplain to the Empress Maria of Austria, sister of Philip II. In Madrid he lodged in the Casa de los Capellanes, built to house the priests of the Descalzas Reales. Calle del Maestro Victoria runs today between the plaza del Celenque and calle de Preciados, over that ground. There he composed the Officium Defunctorum (1605), his greatest work, written as funeral music for the very empress he had served. He died in the same building in 1611 and was buried in the Descalzas, though no one today knows where his remains lie. The Casa de los Capellanes disappeared in 1902; the plot ended up occupied by El Corte Inglés, whose façade has displayed the Cortylandia installation since 1979.

Its names

  • Calle de Capellanes1835–1901
  • Calle de Mariana Pineda1901–1941
  • Calle del Maestro Victoria1941–actualidad
Sources (8)

Crossings