Calle de San Gregorio

Las Salesas·Justicia

The street takes its name from a manor estate that stood on it, whose portico bore a painting of Saint Gregory the Great, the 6th-century pope. Peñasco and Cambronero record private buildings from 1782 and note that the street already appears on Texeira’s map (1656), so the toponym predates that year, though the 1889 text does not say when the present name was fixed. The name spread to the adjoining square, called Plaza de San Gregorio Magno — after the same estate, or after a statue of the saint at its entrance, depending on the source — until the city renamed it Plaza de Chueca in 1943.

Calle de San Gregorio runs between Plaza de Chueca and Calle de Belén, in the Justicia neighbourhood. Its course already appears on Texeira’s 1656 map, and it has reached the present day without changing its name even once. This corner belonged to the barrio de los chisperos, as the blacksmiths and ironworkers of Barquillo were known. From their forges came the doors, knockers, locks and grilles that still adorn baroque Madrid. The man who marked the street most was Tomás de Miguel, a Biscayan master smith who arrived in 1833 and built several new houses whose facades still keep ironwork and sgraffito; his descendants lived on the street for three generations. Neighbouring Plaza de Chueca came about by extending this street over what had been La Galera — a women’s prison — and the orchard of the dukes of Frías. It was called Plaza de San Gregorio Magno until 1943, when the city renamed it after the composer Federico Chueca. The street, by contrast, kept its old name.

Its names

  • Calle de San GregorioAnterior a 1656 — presente
Sources (7)

Crossings