Plaza de San Martín

Anyone crossing the plaza de San Martín today treads on what was once a suburb. The name comes from a Cluniac Benedictine monastery raised outside the walls, whose first documentary trace dates from 16 June 1126, when Alfonso VII authorised the settling of the suburb. A whole neighbourhood took shape around the convent. For centuries the monastery ruled over all that surrounded it. Joseph Bonaparte ordered the church torn down to open the way toward the Descalzas Reales, and the cloister held out until the Mendizábal confiscation of 1836. The gap left by the church joined the public space and gave the square its present outline. On the north side stands the Casa de las Alhajas (1870-1875), and in the middle watches the statue of the Marquis of Pontejos, who in 1838 launched Madrid’s savings banks. Of the monastery that gave rise to it all, not a single stone remains in view: only the name survives.