Paseo de la Virgen del Puerto

Ópera·Palacio

The promenade takes its name from the chapel that Madrid’s magistrate Francisco Antonio de Salcedo y Aguirre, first Marquis of Vadillo, had Pedro de Ribera build between 1716 and 1718 on the banks of the Manzanares. The dedication⁠—⁠Virgen del Puerto⁠—⁠is the patroness of Plasencia, a city where Vadillo had been magistrate between 1689 and 1696, and where his Marian devotion took shape. The epithet “del Puerto” names in Plasencia the spot where tradition places the finding of the image: the crossing of the old road over the Castilian pass, on Mount Valcorchero. Legend adds a layer: Portuguese knights are said to have brought the carving from Lisbon fleeing the Muslims and hidden it in those crags⁠—⁠hence its Extremaduran nickname “la Canchalera.” The Madrid image is a replica of that 15th-century Gothic carving.

The Paseo de la Virgen del Puerto owes its name to the chapel that Pedro de Ribera raised here, his first great urban work in Madrid. The Marquis of Vadillo commissioned from him at once the church and the cleaning-up of the land between the Campo del Moro and the Manzanares, to shelter the copy of the Plasencia Virgin he kept in the Colegio Imperial. The chapel was finished in 1718, and on 10 September the image travelled in procession to its new baroque home: an octagon with a dome, an austere façade and two towers topped with slate spires that nod to the Habsburgs, while the interior anticipates the language Ribera would later unfold on the Toledo bridge. The architect himself carved in 1729 the marquis’s tomb, which remains inside. The Civil War destroyed the chapel and the original carving was lost; in 1939 only the main walls and the dome still stood. Rebuilt by Carlos Mendoza, it was declared a National Monument in 1945 and worship returned in 1951. Today the promenade runs along the left bank of the Manzanares from the Toledo bridge to the Puente del Rey.

Its names

  • Campos de la Tela / Paseo de la Telahasta c. 1716
  • Paseo Nuevo de la Cortec. 1716–1726
  • Paseo de la Virgen del Puertodesde c. 1726
Sources (10)

Crossings