Calle del Nuncio

The name of this street was left by a tenant with a diplomatic post. Between Plaza de Puerta Cerrada and the Costanilla de San Pedro, the Nuncio — the pope’s representative in Madrid — lived for centuries, and the street kept his title as a surname. Its winding course inherits the shape of the 11th-century Islamic suburbs. The plot that concentrates the history is that of the old palace of Francisco de Vargas, which passed from hand to hand down to Rodrigo Calderón, Marquis of Siete Iglesias. When Calderón fell from favor, around 1618 Philip III turned his properties into the Nuncio’s residence. There the Tribunal of the Rota was installed, which judges ecclesiastical cases and still operates in that very place. Two Madrid nuncios ended up as popes: Urban VII and Innocent X, subject of Velázquez’s famous portrait. The street hides stones older than any palace. Beneath number 13, a recent excavation brought to light Andalusi pottery, a trace of the dense medina of Mayrit that slept here before the Christian conquest.