Calle del Mesón de Paredes

Lavapiés·Embajadores

The street takes its name from the inn that Simón Miguel Paredes built on the edge of the town, probably in the 15th century, described by Pedro de Répide as the most spacious in the outskirts of Madrid. On his death the property passed to his sons Juan, Fernando and Iván de Paredes, all three magistrates of the estate of the Knights; Juan is recorded as a guard to King John II of Castile (1406-1454). The founder’s surname, joined to the generic word “mesón” (inn), settled into the street’s name.

It drops steeply from Plaza de Tirso de Molina down to the Ronda de Valencia, in the very heart of Lavapiés. The name was slow to take hold: for centuries the street lived broken into pieces with different names, until the 1868 reform stitched them all under a single sign. Few streets held so many charity houses and schools. At number 74 stood the Inclusa, the foundling hospital for abandoned children; at the southern end, the Escuelas Pías de San Fernando, home to Spain’s first school for the deaf and mute. José Benito de Churriguera, the architect who gave his name to the Churrigueresque style, was born here, and at number 13 the Taberna de Antonio Sánchez still serves customers, the oldest tavern in Madrid preserved without any major refurbishment. At the corner with Sombrerete rises the corrala of 1839, a national monument and the best preserved in the city. Mesonero Romanos ranked it among the most authentically Madrilenian streets of the old lower quarters.

Its names

  • Calle del Mesón / Calle de CabestrerosHasta c. 1769 (plano Texeira, 1656)
  • Calle de la Hoz Alta / Calle de la Hoz Bajac. 1769–1868 (plano Espinosa, 1769)
  • Calle del Mesón de ParedesDesde 1868
Sources (10)

Crossings