Plaza de San Ginés

Sol

The square takes its name from the parish of San Ginés de Arlés, one of the oldest churches in Madrid, dedicated to the Gallic martyr Genesius of Arles (d. ca. 303-308), beheaded for refusing to transcribe Diocletian’s edict of persecution. The suburb that grew outside the walls in the shelter of the medieval church passed the saint’s name to the public space beside it.

The Plaza de San Ginés hides behind the church that lends it its name, linked to calle del Arenal by the Pasadizo de San Ginés. It never had a life of its own: it began as the church’s service yard, and under the arch of the passageway the parish set up the funerary catafalques it brought out for anniversaries and funeral rites. The church has a very long memory. It first appears in 1156, lay outside the walls in the time of the 1202 charter, and the sandy ground eventually sank the old fabric: between 1641 and 1645 the building still standing today was raised, commissioned by Philip IV. Over the centuries the corner gathered earthly trades. In 1894 the chocolatería that still draws night owls opened; in the 1920s the journalist César González-Ruano christened it “the rascals' Maxim’s,” and the nickname fixed it on the map of the Madrid small hours.

Its names

  • Plazuela de San Ginésdocumentada al menos from the 17th century (plano de Teixeira, 1656)
  • La Escondida (apodo popular)Segunda República española, años 1930s
Sources (8)

Crossings