Plaza de la Cruz Verde

On top of a small hill, where calle de Segovia meets calle de la Villa, stood a wooden cross painted green that gave the square its name. It was the banner of the Holy Office: the Inquisition held its “autillos” here, discreet executions far from the crowds, and the cross recalled the last of them. Once the site was no longer used for such acts, the cross stayed fixed to the orchard wall of the Sacramento convent, and the square grew around it almost as urban leftover space. At number 1 lived, in the 18th century, the architect Ventura Rodríguez, the very man commissioned to design the seat of the Supreme Council of the Inquisition a step away from here. In 1850 the cross vanished and in its place came a fountain crowned by a marble Diana the Huntress carved around 1620. The square also holds a recent wound: on 6 February 1992 an ETA car bomb killed five people beside the fountain. A plaque records their names.