Calle Mantuano
It recalls Dionisio Mantuano, painter of perspectives and engineer of stage machinery at the Coliseo del Buen Retiro during the reigns of Philip IV and Charles II.
Dionisio Mantuano painted architectures that did not exist. His speciality was quadratura, the art of feigning vaults and colonnades on a flat wall until the eye was fooled. Around 1656 the Marquis of Heliche called him for the stage machinery of the Coliseo del Buen Retiro: the contraptions that brought clouds down from the ceiling or made a palace vanish during a play.
Calle de Mantuano crosses the Ciudad Jardín estate, in Chamartín, a layout of low houses and gardens raised in the 1920s. At number 51 stands today the Nicolás Salmerón Cultural Centre, with a public library.