Costanilla de los Desamparados

Barrio de las Letras·Cortes

After the Colegio de Niños Desamparados, founded in 1596 on the corner with calle de Atocha as a school, hospice and refuge for orphans. From that charitable institution the street inherited its name.

The slope is named after an orphanage. At the top, where the street meets Atocha, the Congregation of the Love of God raised a school for orphans in 1596: there the abandoned children learned letters and a trade. From that building comes the name that climbs up from Huertas. But the surprise lies a few metres lower. On that same block, with its door opening onto the costanilla, worked Juan de la Cuesta. From his printing house came, in 1605, the first edition of Don Quixote. Whoever climbs the slope today treads the spot where the novel was first printed.

Its names

  • Costanilla de los Desamparadosh.1600
Sources (6)