Duque de Liria

Calle del Duque de Liria skirts the northern wall of a palace and links plaza de Cristino Martos with calle de la Princesa, in the heart of the Universidad quarter. The street is only a few paces long, but the building that names it left its mark on the city’s memory: Mesonero Romanos held it to be the finest of Madrid’s private buildings for its sumptuousness. It was commissioned by the 3rd Duke of Liria, of the Fitz-James Stuart line, and completed by Ventura Rodríguez around 1770 with echoes of the Royal Palace. In 1802, when the Duchess of Alba painted by Goya died without issue, the titles passed to the house of Berwick and Liria, since then merged into one with this palace as its seat. A bombing in November 1936 gutted the interior and left only the façades. The reconstruction, on plans by Edwin Lutyens, was carried out between 1948 and 1956.

At the corner of this street and Calle de Mártires de Alcalá, next to the Plaza del Seminario de Nobles, there stood during the eighteenth century a house known as “la casa del Duende” (the Goblin’s house). The tenants reported nightly apparitions of bearded dwarves that terrified them. According to a record of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, the explanation was prosaic: in the house’s unknown basement a gang of counterfeiters operated, minting Brazilian gold doublets, and had hired several dwarves to scare off the neighbours. When the house was demolished, the workmen found the basement with the counterfeiting machines.