Pasaje de Matheu

The Pasaje de Matheu links calle de Espoz y Mina with calle de la Victoria, a handful of metres from Puerta del Sol. Where it now opens stood the convent of the Minims of La Victoria, which the disentailment ordered demolished in 1836. Manuel Matheu bought the plot and commissioned something Madrid had never seen: an arcade in the Paris style. Over an iron frame ran a glass roof, and beneath it lined up luxury shops with the Bazar de la Villa y Corte at the centre. When it opened in 1847, no other building of its kind existed in Spain. The roof did not last: in 1874 the vault was dismantled and the passage was left open to the sky. With it fell the commercial name, and Madrileños began to call it by that of its founder. In the last third of the century it was reborn as a street of cafés. The Café de Francia and the Café de París, opposed by political camp, put tables out on the street in the French manner; from there, so the story goes, springs Madrid’s café-terrace culture. Today the way remains roofless, with taverns and tapas bars.