Calle Juan Bautista Sacchetti

Giovanni Battista Sacchetti (Turin, 1690 — Madrid, 1764) directed the building of the Royal Palace of Madrid after the death of his master Filippo Juvara in 1736. He held the posts of master builder of the Royal Works and of the city of Madrid until his death, two days after the palace was inaugurated. The city council named the street after him on 25 February 1955.

When a fire devoured the old Alcázar on Christmas Eve 1734, Madrid was left without a palace and the Bourbons needed someone able to raise another to match their ambition. That commission ended up in the hands of the man this street is named after. Giovanni Battista Sacchetti was born in Turin in 1690. He learned his craft with Filippo Juvara and travelled with him to Spain in 1736. When Juvara died that same January, Philip V handed him the project for the new Royal Palace, to rise on the ruins of the Alcázar. Sacchetti did not simply inherit his master’s plan: he discarded the French-style villa Juvara had imagined and replaced it with a square floor plan around a central courtyard, in a classicist Baroque tinged with Piedmontese influence. Work began in April 1738. He died in Madrid on 3 December 1764. Calle Juan Bautista Sacchetti was named on 25 February 1955 and runs through the Jerónimos neighbourhood, a step away from the palaces and stages his work helped to shape.

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