Plaza de Segovia Nueva

Los Austrias·Palacio

The name points to the Calle de Segovia, which runs beside the square and owes its name to the old causeway and the Puente de Segovia, the road toward the Castilian city. The adjective “Nueva” (New) distinguishes this space from the street itself: when the thoroughfare was laid out under Philip II around 1570 it was first called Calle Real Nueva or “calle Nueva,” so the square formed around it was named Segovia Nueva against the earlier stretch, by then simply Calle de Segovia. On Teixeira’s map (1656) the street appears as “calle de la Puente”; the square is not recorded with a proper name on the known historical maps, but the popular use of the adjective persists to this day in the official register.

A small, triangular, somewhat orphaned square: until recently it had no visible plaque, and the only doorway addressed to it bore the sign of the calle de los Tintoreros. Into its barely eighty-five metres flow several streets, and it forms a single space with the plaza de Puerta Cerrada, separated by the mouth of the calle de Segovia. The surname “Nueva” comes from the street, not the square. Around 1570 Philip II ordered the hollow of the San Pedro stream lowered to clear the way toward the river, where Juan de Herrera would raise the Puente de Segovia. That thoroughfare was called calle Nueva; from that “new” the square took its name, so as not to be confused with the already established stretch. Around it beats a Madrid of trades: the calle de los Tintoreros recalls the silk dyers, and the calle de la Concepción Jerónima bears the name of a convent that Beatriz Galindo founded in 1504.

Its names

  • Calle Real Nueva / calle Nuevah. 1570 - 17th century
  • Plaza de Segovia Nueva18th century - actualidad
Sources (10)

Crossings