Calle Perseo
Named for the constellation of Perseus, the Greek hero, part of the celestial repertoire that christened the Estrella neighborhood.
When the developer Urbis built the Estrella neighborhood on old wasteland of the Retiro, from the 1950s on, it sowed the streets with sky: Calle de Sirio, the Calle de la Estrella Polar, the Calle de la Cruz del Sur, the Calle del Pez Volador. Calle Perseo joined that roster as one of the great constellations of the northern hemisphere, neighbor to Andromeda.
Behind the pattern of stars there is a hero: Perseus beheaded Medusa, whose gaze turned men to stone, and rescued Andromeda chained to a rock as food for a sea monster. The ancients set him in the firmament with the severed head in his hand, and called the star Algol the eye of Medusa, which dims every two days. From that same region of the sky spring the Perseids: each August, around the 10th, the “tears of Saint Lawrence” cross the sky with the radiant right above this street.