Calle del Clavel

Calle del Clavel links Calle del Caballero de Gracia with Calle de las Infantas, in the Justicia district, cut diagonally by the Gran Vía. Its name was born long before that avenue, and it springs from a flower. Jacobo Gratii, an Italian nobleman whom Madrid knew as the Caballero de Gracia, founded a convent of Franciscan Conceptionists here in 1604. Five nuns lived there and tended a garden, in which grew a famous carnation bush. It is said that Philip III and Queen Margaret of Austria visited; the king wanted to enlarge it and quarrelled with the Duke of Lerma over who would pay for the work. The queen cut two carnations, gave one to each man and left them both committed. From this, tradition says, the street’s name remained. On the corner with Calle de la Reina stood the Masserano Palace, where between 1811 and 1812 General Léopold Hugo lived with his son Victor, then a boy of nine. The child took from that Madrid stay memories that reappear in his work, among them the setting of Ruy Blas.

Victor Hugo lived in the Masserano Palace, at the corner of Calle del Clavel and Calle de la Reina, between 1811 and 1812, at nine years old. His father, General Léopold Hugo, had the palace requisitioned by Joseph I. The Madrid stay marked the writer’s memory: years later he set the action of Ruy Blas in Madrid. A plaque at the angle of the two streets recalls the episode.