Calle del León

Long before the name was fixed, this street was the gossip corner of Golden Age actors. A step from the playhouses, they gathered here to wait for parts and to whisper about impresarios and who had triumphed the night before. Tradition ties the name to a caged lion that someone showed the public for two maravedís, but chroniclers warn it is legend and the true origin is lost; they don’t even agree on the owner’s nationality. At number 2 survives a stone coat of arms with carved surnames that has nothing to do with the beast. And in a house at the corner with the old Calle de Francos, today de Cervantes, Miguel de Cervantes died in 1616.