Calle de Justiniano

A street under 130 meters long in the heart of the Justicia district. It opened in 1869 on the garden of a Discalced Carmelite convent demolished after the Democratic Sexennium, and its buildings all date from the 1880s: the doorway of number 4 still bears the carved date “1882.” The name honors Justinian I, the Byzantine emperor who ordered the Corpus Iuris Civilis, foundation of European civil law. The choice had its logic: in 1870 the neighboring Salesas convent became the Palace of Justice, and the City Council gave the streets on the plot legal-sounding names. Répide judged it “a little arbitrary.” Through the 20th century the street lived on small trades⁠—⁠a ropemaker’s, a beret factory, Mari’s fish shop⁠—⁠and writers Carmen Martín Gaite and Leopoldo Panero met at the Bar Marylin. In the eighties came interior designers and antique dealers, without the Movida sweeping it away.