Calle del Rosario

A narrow street of the Palacio quarter that descends from the Gran Vía de San Francisco to the Cuesta de las Descargas. It already appears with this name on the Texeira map of 1656, so it has been called the same for some three and a half centuries. The name comes from the devotion that most stirred Baroque Madrid. Before dawn, the processions of the Rosario de la Aurora set out: rows of neighbors lit by lanterns making their way through the quarter while the city slept. The confraternity started from a chapel of the Franciscan convent dedicated to the Virgin of the Dawn, whose door opened right onto this little street, and the procession ended up lending its devotion to the whole way. At the northern end stood the house of Baltasar Gil Imón de la Mota, prosecutor of the Royal Council and governor of the Council of the Treasury under Philip IV. His residence marked the map: the gate that opened in the wall at the end of the street came to be called Portillo de Gilimón.