Calle Portal de Belén

This street owes its name to no building or institution that stood on the spot before. Calle del Portal de Belén springs from a different idea: to tell, street by street, the story of Christ’s birth. To understand it you have to look at the whole neighbourhood. It lies southeast of the Retiro Park and is called Niño Jesús after the hospital of the same name, founded in 1877 by the Duchess of Santoña. The surrounding land stayed undeveloped until, from 1947, Inmobiliaria Urbis S.A. took it over. In naming the new streets, those in charge laid them out in the very order of the Nativity. First Avenida de Nazaret, then Calle de la Anunciación, then this Calle del Portal de Belén, beyond it Plaza del Niño Jesús and, at the end, Calle de los Reyes Magos. The stable is the central scene of that route: the manger where, in Christian tradition, Jesus was born. The street that recalls it is barely 97 metres long and runs between Calle de la Anunciación and Calle de los Reyes Magos.