Plaza del Carmen

Plaza del Carmen, a couple of steps from Puerta del Sol, owes its name to a convent that no longer exists. Before there was a convent, however, there was scandal: the site held a brothel, a house of public women, which Philip II ordered demolished. In its place came the shod Carmelites from Toledo, who sang their first mass on 17 January 1575. For two centuries the convent was one of the great landmarks of the centre, to the point of naming the square and the calle del Carmen. The Mendizábal confiscation changed everything: by 1861 the building threatened to collapse and was pulled down, and the old little square widened into the public square it keeps today. The most surprising thing came later. The excavations of 2014 to 2016 brought to light, beneath the pavement, the two cloisters of the old convent and a necropolis of friars with their inscribed gravestones. Anyone crossing the square today walks over the tombs of the Carmelites who gave it its name.