Calle Imperial

Sol

The street takes its name from the Imperial College of the Society of Jesus, itself named for the patronage of Empress Maria of Austria, daughter of Charles I, who on her death in 1603 left her estate to the Jesuits to found a college with a perpetual income. “Imperial” was the college; the street inherited the name through proximity or from lodging the first Jesuits, depending on the source.

Calle Imperial descends through the Sol district from Plaza de la Provincia to Calle de Toledo. It has borne the same name since the 16th century, already labeled thus on Texeira’s 1656 map. That “imperial” has two versions. The showier one holds that these houses lodged the first Jesuits to reach Madrid to found the college that would come to be called Imperial. The other, more prosaic, simply says the street was among those passing closest to that college. Number 8 holds a double life: before the 19th century it housed the town’s office of weights and measures, and in 1884 it opened Madrid’s first fire station, which ran until 2017. Today it is a hotel. Galdós used the street as a setting in Misericordia and Fortunata y Jacinta.

Its names

  • Sin nombre documentado / camino hacia ToledoAnterior al 16th century
  • Calle ImperialSiglo 16th – actualidad
Sources (8)

Crossings