Calle del Reloj
The name comes from a sundial that presided over the façade of the houses of Doña María de Córdoba y Aragón, lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne of Austria (Philip II’s fourth wife) and governess to the Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia. In 1590 those houses passed to the Augustinian friars to found their college, but the street’s name had already been fixed by that timepiece.
Calle del Reloj, in the old Palacio quarter, beside the site where the Alcázar once stood. Barely two blocks that carry centuries of history, running today between Plaza de la Marina Española and Calle del Río.
The name comes from the houses that Doña María de Córdoba y Aragón, lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne of Austria, kept here. Her façade bore a sundial (“reloj”), and that clock christened the street before she handed the buildings to the Augustinian friars, who founded their college here in 1590. For their church’s altarpiece they commissioned from El Greco a cycle of seven paintings.
At number 9, Francisco de Goya lived with Josefa Bayeu from his arrival in Madrid in 1775 to work at the Royal Tapestry Factory; his son Eusebio Ramón was born there. The Travesía del Reloj, which extends the street, saw the birth in 1805 of Manuel García, a baritone and inventor of the laryngoscope in 1854.
Its names
- Calle del RelojSiglo 16th (documentada antes de 1590)
- Travesía del Reloj (antes calle del Limón Baja / del Limoncillo)Hasta 1835
- Calle del Reloj (nombre actual)Siglo 16th — presente
Sources (9)
- Calle del Reloj — Wikipedia
- El antiguo Madrid (Mesonero Romanos) — Biblioteca Virtual Cervantes
- Colegio de Doña María de Aragón — Wikipedia
- El antiguo Consejo Supremo de la Inquisición — Rutas con Historia
- Calle y Travesía del Reloj — EsculturaYArte
- Imágenes Antiguas de Madrid: La Travesía del Reloj y un inventor
- Madrid goyesco — Wikipedia
- Origen del Senado y del Congreso — Disfrutando de Madrid
- Colegio de Doña María de Aragón — Biblioteca UCM