Calle Mira el Río Alta

El Rastro·Embajadores

The name recalls the flood that drowned Madrid in the winter of 1434–1435 (or 1438–1439, depending on the source). The Manzanares overflowed and residents climbed the crag crowning this edge of the medieval town to watch the rising water, crying “look at the river!” The name may also have arisen more plainly from the way the first houses here faced the river. The two explanations are not incompatible: legend amplified what may have been mere topography.

Lean out from the top of Mira el Río Alta, between Carlos Arniches and Arganzuela, and you will grasp the name with no one to explain it. The southern slope of the old town falls here toward the Puerta de Toledo, and once the view reached the Manzanares meadow. Hence that “look at the river.” It has a twin, Mira el Río Baja, and the drop between them is no whim: the whole sector was built on the Peñón, a rocky escarpment the city later dismantled. For centuries this was an outer quarter, a corner of mattress-makers, old-clothes dealers and traders in the secondhand, and from the 17th century the Rastro spread its stalls here. Galdós, in Fortunata y Jacinta, sets a corrala tenement over Mira el Río as a portrait of Madrid’s crowded working class.

Its names

  • Calle de Juan García Pasarón17th century - h. 1769
  • Calle de Mira el Río Altah. finales 18th century - actualidad
Sources (9)

Crossings