Calle Rompelanzas

The name refers to the pole of the carriage, the wooden shaft joining the animal team to the body. The street was opened around 1575 to give access to the Carmen convent, and its potholes and narrowness made carriages break that piece here time and again.

Rompelanzas (“break-lances”) measures some sixteen meters, just enough to link Calle del Carmen with Calle de Preciados, in the heart of the Sol district. Its origin lies in a demolition: the town magistrate ordered some ruined houses torn down after the Carmen Calzado convent went up, between 1573 and 1575, and opened this passage so carriages could reach the convent without going around the block. The shortcut came out crooked. The turn was so narrow and the ground so battered that carriage poles snapped again and again on the curve. Hence the name that stuck to it forever. Today a tiled plaque still tells, to whoever stops to read it, the accident that named it.

Its names

Calle de Rompelanzasc. 1575 – actualidad

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Its names

Crossings