Plaza de Chamberí

The name Chamberí is one of the most disputed in Madrid, and no one has settled it entirely. The most repeated explanation traces it to a French regiment from Chambéry, the Savoy city, quartered here during the Napoleonic occupation: the soldiers are said to have named the spot after their homeland. Another version attributes it to María Luisa Gabriela of Savoy, first wife of Philip V, raised in Chambéry. One fact works against the first theory: the name already appears on the 1761 map of Madrid, nearly half a century before the French troops arrived. The name was here before the regiment. The square is presided over by the church of Santa Teresa and Santa Isabel. A step away, underground, lay the old Chamberí metro station, closed in 1966 when the platforms were lengthened and trains stopped calling: an intact platform where time stood still, now a museum.