Calle Gómez de Mora

A street dedicated to Juan Gómez de Mora, the architect who gave Madrid much of its Baroque face. Chief master of the royal works from 1610, he translated the Herreran canon into an architecture of brick, slate and spire-topped towers. A few meters away he left his major works: the Plaza Mayor, with its 477 balconies, built between 1617 and 1620; the Court Prison; and the Casa de la Villa. His career had a resounding fall: in 1637 the Count-Duke of Olivares banished him to Murcia for handing over a Titian from the royal collection and leaving a copy in its place. The street was earlier called del Conde de Barajas, after the Zapata palace. The city renamed it in 1939, in the very neighborhood where the architect worked and lived.