Paseo de Recoletos

Long before carriages and later cars ran here, this stretch was a double tree-lined walk following the course of the Fuente Castellana stream. It appears that way on the map Antonio Mancelli drew between 1614 and 1622: two rows of trees flanking the water, on the town’s edge. On the site now held by the National Library and the Archaeological Museum stood the convent of the Augustinian Recollects. Hence “Recoletos”, and hence the several names the place accumulated: Prado de Recoletos, Prado Nuevo and Paseo de Copacabana, the last after an image of the Virgin of Copacabana that Friar Miguel de Aguirre placed in the convent chapel in 1662. The great change came with Charles III. From 1763, the Count of Aranda drove the transformation of the Prado-Recoletos axis, with José de Hermosilla and Ventura Rodríguez leading the works. No trace of the convent remained either: on its site the Palace of the Marquis of Salamanca was built between 1845 and 1858, now home to the BBVA Foundation.