Calle Virgen María

The name springs from a business decision. When Inmobiliaria Urbis commissioned the architect José Antonio Domínguez Salazar to plan the parcelling of the Niño Jesús neighbourhood —⁠whose first phase rose between 1947 and 1954 on a former rubbish dump of steep slopes⁠—⁠, the developers looked for a thread to give the new streets unity. They found it in the Nativity. So there arose, in a cluster, Calle Anunciación, Calle Portal de Belén, Calle Reyes Magos, Avenida de Nazaret, Plaza del Niño Jesús and this Calle Virgen María. The theme did not come from nowhere. On that site the Children’s Hospital of Niño Jesús was already running, opened in December 1881 on Avenida de Menéndez Pelayo, the work of the architect Francisco Jareño y Alarcón. The institution had been born four years earlier, founded by the Duchess of Santoña. Jareño’s neo-Mudéjar building still explains the street’s name to anyone who looks up. Its façade bears three niches: the central one holds the Christ Child and the side ones the Miraculous Virgin and Saint Vincent de Paul.