Plaza de San Francisco

La Latina·Palacio

The square takes its name from the Franciscan convent that crowned this hilltop from at least the 13th century. The convent earned the epithet “el Grande” (the Great) to distinguish it from another San Francisco de Paula convent on the Carrera de San Jerónimo, near Puerta del Sol. The open ground before its façade was popularly known as Campillo de San Francisco before it became a formal square.

Tradition holds that in 1217 Saint Francis of Assisi himself raised a hermitage here by the river, on land granted by local residents. No document before the 17th century supports it: it is devotion, not chronicle. On that site grew the most important Franciscan convent in Madrid, which came to guard the Holy Places of Jerusalem. The frontage we see today was born on 31 August 1760, when the friars pulled down the medieval convent to raise a monumental church. The work passed through three hands until Sabatini finished the façade in 1784, with Charles III presiding over the consecration. The square suffered its greatest upheaval in the 20th century. The opening of the Gran Vía de San Francisco, begun in 1936 and inaugurated in 1961, flattened the immediate neighbourhood of 17th- and 18th-century houses and completely reshaped its edges.

Its names

  • Campillo de San FranciscoSiglo 17th – 19th century
  • Plaza de San FranciscoSiglo 19th – actualidad
Sources (10)

Crossings