Calle del Rollo

Los Austrias·Palacio

The name comes from the jurisdictional column (“rollo”) that once stood on this street: a stone pillar topped with an iron cross that marked Madrid’s charter of township before it became a court city. Peñasco y Cambronero (1889) record two alternative readings — the winding shape of the layout and an obscure legend about a dead child found here — though most later historians take the first explanation as correct.

Calle del Rollo branches off Calle de Madrid, draws a curve to the north and ends at Plaza de la Cruz Verde, in the middle of the Palacio quarter. Barely a hundred meters, and that curve already announces the tangle around its name. A “rollo” was a stone pillar that told the newcomer that in this place justice was administered on its own authority. But the Texeira map of 1656 does not call it del Rollo: it records it as Calle de los Arcos. The present name appears already settled by 1769, so the change happened between those dates. Its lower stretch was called Calle de la Parra after a huge grapevine, and from that vine hangs the best story. The vine was linked to the town’s school and its master, Juan López de Hoyos, whom the council rebuked for being too soft: he did not punish the pupils who stole the grapes. Among those fruit thieves was, by tradition, a certain Miguel de Cervantes, the master’s pupil. Few hundred-meter streets can boast of having tempted the author of Don Quixote.

Its names

  • Calle de los Arcos1656 (plano de Texeira)
  • Calle de la Parra (tramo inferior)17th century (plano de Texeira y otras fuentes)
  • Calle del Rollo1769 (plano de Espinosa de los Monteros) — actualidad
Sources (7)

Crossings