Plaza de Santiago

The square occupies the western edge of the old quarter, a step from the Royal Palace. It is a small, irregular space that today serves as a passage between the Plaza de Oriente and the Plaza Mayor. The parish that gives it its name is among the ten churches of the 1202 charter. It is said to date from Visigothic times and that followers of the Arian heresy gathered in it, while the Nicenes prayed in the nearby San Juan Bautista; documents to confirm this are lacking, but the antiquity of the cult is not in dispute. By the early 19th century the building was in ruins, and Juan Antonio Cuervo raised between 1811 and 1814 the neoclassical church still standing. It also inherited the parish of San Juan Bautista, demolished by Joseph I to open the Plaza de Oriente. The place-name comes straight from the church’s dedication and escaped the political renamings that changed so many squares in the centre.