Plaza de las Comendadoras

The Plaza de las Comendadoras owes its name to the only convent Madrid keeps intact, home to nuns who had servants, collected rents and wore the habit of a military order. They followed the rule of Saint Augustine, but as noble ladies of the Order of Santiago they lived far from strict enclosure. Their number never exceeded twenty-five. The origin lies in the will of Íñigo de Cárdenas Zapata, who in 1584 arranged to found a house of Santiago in Madrid. The first nuns arrived in 1650 from Valladolid. The church was finished in 1697, with a Greek-cross plan and a dome bearing the cross of Santiago, and between 1774 and 1777 Sabatini unified the block that today closes the street. The 20th century brought darker chapters: during the war the nuns were expelled, the convent served as a militia jail and later a prison, where the poet José Hierro was held. Restored between 2004 and 2023, the church and the Sacristy of the Knights can now be visited. The square, pedestrian and intimate, hosts the Pottery Fair every May.