Pasadizo de San Ginés

Barely sixty metres separate calle del Arenal from the plazuela de San Ginés, and they are covered on foot: the pasadizo de San Ginés is too narrow for anything else. Its twisting course fools the visitor into thinking it medieval. It is not: on Teixeira’s map of around 1656 there was a wider street here, and the present shape came from the reforms of the 18th century. The narrowing began with the church. Rebuilding it from 1655, Juan Ruiz enlarged the floor plan until it ate into the public way. To untangle the mess, José Arredondo had the idea that gave the place its name: open a vault beneath a building to link the streets around the church. The work was carried out between 1762 and 1763. So arose the passage, a street that runs beneath a house. The alley saw much trade: looms, the first silk-calendering machine in Madrid, a second-hand bookstall that survives as the Librería San Ginés. At number 3, the Salón Eslava opened in 1871 and is today the Joy Eslava nightclub; at number 2, the Chocolatería San Ginés, from 1894, which Valle-Inclán disguised as the “Modernist Fritter Shop” in Luces de bohemia.