Calle de Lope de Vega
Named after Lope de Vega (1562-1635), the most prolific playwright of the Golden Age, the “Phoenix of Wits,” creator of the Spanish comedia nueva. It was called Cantarranas until 1835, after the puddles of the San Jerónimo monastery’s gardens along its lower stretch.
Sister Marcela de San Félix, the daughter Lope had with the actress Micaela de Luján, took vows at the convent of the Discalced Trinitarians on this street. From there comes the most moving episode of the place: when Lope died in 1635, tradition holds that the funeral procession swerved to pass before the convent, so that Marcela could see her father’s coffin from behind the grille.
The same convent holds another famous tomb, that of Cervantes, buried here in 1616. And here lies the puzzle for the stroller: the Lope de Vega House-Museum is not on this street, but on the parallel one dedicated to Cervantes, because it was there that the playwright spent his final years.
Its names
- Calle de Cantarranash.1623 (documentado en el plano de Mancelli, 1623, y en el de Texeira, 1656)
- Calle de Lope de Vega1835
Sources (8)
- Calle de Lope de Vega — Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
- Lope de Vega — Patrimonio y Paisaje Urbano, Ayuntamiento de Madrid
- Calles: Lope de Vega y Cervantes en Madrid — Gato por Madrid
- Calle Lope de Vega — madridnoticia.com
- Por las calles de Madrid: Calle de Lope de Vega (blog con ref. a Repide)
- Mesonero Romanos, El antiguo Madrid (1861) — Cervantes Virtual
- Arte en Madrid — calle Lope de Vega (plano Mancelli 1623 y Texeira 1656)
- Casa Museo Lope de Vega — Convento de las Trinitarias