Travesía de la Cruz Verde

The name comes from the green-painted wooden cross that was the emblem of the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Before each auto-da-fé, the officers carried this cross in procession to the site of the ceremony. In the stretch outside the Santo Domingo gate, beside Calle de la Cruz Verde, the so-called autillos, minor executions, were held. The green cross became so tied to the spot that it gave its name first to the main street and then to the adjoining travesía.

Travesía de la Cruz Verde: barely twenty meters of pedestrian alley joining calle de la Cruz Verde with calle de San Bernardo, in the Universidad neighborhood. The name sounds solemn, almost sinister, and has good reason to. Here, in the 17th century, the city ended. Beyond the Santo Domingo gate, the Holy Office executed the lower-ranking condemned in the autillos, discreet executions without a crowd. A huge wooden cross painted green, symbol of the Inquisition, marked the spot and ended up naming the street. The travesía came later, and its first name was anything but frightening: calle del Nabo (Turnip Street), after the greengrocers who came down from Fuencarral. When in 1835 the council banned street vending, the alley borrowed the name of the street it served. The detail worth savoring: the Inquisition had been abolished in 1834, so the inquisitorial name arrived just a year later, when the tribunal that inspired it no longer existed.

Its names

Calle del Naboanterior a 1835
Travesía de la Cruz Verde1835 hasta hoy

Sources (8)

Its names

Crossings