Calle del Príncipe de Anglona

Barely eighty meters separate the Costanilla de San Pedro from the Costanilla de San Andrés, and along that short stretch runs Calle del Príncipe de Anglona, hugging a palace that hides a secret in plain sight. Its layout is medieval, part of the oldest fabric of the Palacio quarter. The name arrives with Pedro de Alcántara Téllez-Girón, second Prince of Anglona, younger son of the House of Osuna, lieutenant general in the Peninsular War and first director of the Prado Museum. He led a novelistic life: he fought under the Duke del Parque, joined the liberal wing of the high nobility, and ended up exiled in Italy when the Hundred Thousand Sons of St. Louis restored absolutism in 1823. The secret is the garden. Five hundred square meters in terraces, a garden suspended in the middle of the old town, open to the public since 2002. The curious thing is that nothing shows from the street: the palace façade hides it completely, and whoever passes walks beside an entire garden without suspecting it. The street was earlier called Calle Sin Puertas, because the owners ceded land to the town on condition that no door be opened on that side.