Calle del Sacramento

Calle del Sacramento descends from Plaza del Cordón to Calle Mayor, in the heart of Habsburg Madrid, and preserves one of the cleanest medieval layouts in the town. It also has a peculiarity that Mesonero Romanos noted: it was the first, and perhaps the only, street of old Madrid to run over flat ground. The name comes from a convent founded in 1615 by the Duke of Uceda, Philip III’s favorite, who ceded some of his houses and brought the first Cistercian nuns from Valladolid. The church was designed by Juan Gómez de Mora, but it was a work endlessly postponed: seventy-three years of building, with a Baroque façade by Pedro de Ribera finished in 1744. In 1972 the convent was demolished to open an underground car park; the church survived and since 1986 has been the Cathedral of the Armed Forces. One last secret remains at number 7: the Huerto de las Monjas (the Nuns' Orchard), where the Bernardines grew fruit trees, with its old Prioress’s fountain hidden a few meters from the bustle.