Paseo de la Castellana

The name comes literally from water. Beneath the avenue ran the stream of the Fuente Castellana, fed by a spring that surfaced near today’s glorieta de Emilio Castelar. That flow set the orientation of the promenade as it began opening northward, and the fountain ended up lending its name to the longest street in Madrid. The fountain was raised in honour of Isabella II, born in 1830 and future queen: a granite obelisk topped by a star, with a basin flanked by two bronze sphinxes. The first stretch opened as Paseo de las Delicias de la Princesa, though it was soon known by the fountain. The plain form Castellana is the one that survived its many later christenings, until the current name returned in 1980. The fountain itself did move. Today it rests far from the avenue it named, in the Arganzuela park beside the Manzanares.