Travesía de las Vistillas

Travesía de las Vistillas descends on a gentle slope between plaza de San Francisco el Grande and calle de Don Pedro, in the Palacio neighborhood. It runs along the edge of a hill that already in the Middle Ages served as a natural defense, where the dense web of convents opens suddenly toward the river. The hill owes its name to the panoramas seen from its summit: the Guadarrama range, the Manzanares, the Casa de Campo and the Royal Palace. It appears labeled “Vistillas de San Francisco” as early as Texeira’s 1656 map. In 1835, when the council renamed Madrid’s streets, the travesía took the name of las Vistillas, the same one the hill’s square received that year. In the early 20th century, the building on the corner with San Buenaventura held a story of artists: there the sculptor Victorio Macho kept his studio while working on the monument to Galdós, and later the painter Ignacio Zuloaga lived in it until his death in 1945.