Barrio de las Letras, Madrid's Golden Age writers' quarter: a self-guided walk

By Alleytale

Cervantes, Lope, Quevedo, Góngora

In the 1600s the actors, playwrights and poets of Madrid lived within a few streets of the playhouses: Cervantes died in a house on Calle del León, Lope de Vega lived on Calle de Cervantes, Quevedo owned a house round the corner and his rival Góngora lived in the quarter too.

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The stops

1. 1Plaza de Santa Ana

   The square takes its name from a Carmelite convent that stood here until 1810, when it was demolished under Joseph Bonaparte and the plaza was opened up. It sits beside the Teatro Español, and it keeps a seated marble and bronze statue of the Golden Age dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca, unveiled in 1880, and a small statue of the poet Federico García Lorca, placed here in 1996. The base of the Calderón monument is inscribed with the line "Life is a dream, but not its glory".

   

2. 2Iglesia de San Sebastián

   The church takes its name from a hermitage on the road to the Atocha shrine, and it was founded on that site in 1541. Cervantes's funeral services were held here in 1616 and Lope de Vega's in 1635, and Lope was buried in the church's small cemetery, though the exact spot is now unknown. Actors, managers and playwrights founded a brotherhood of players in this parish in 1624, and after a bomb hit the church in November 1936 it was rebuilt between 1943 and 1959.

   

3. 3Teatro Español

   In the age of Philip II the city council established two permanent playhouses in Madrid, the Corral de la Cruz and the Corral del Príncipe, and this theatre is the successor of the second. A religious brotherhood bought the Corral del Príncipe in 1580, it was rebuilt in the 18th century, and in 1849 a royal decree renamed it Teatro Español. The present building dates from 1887 to 1895, and the names of famous theatre people are engraved on its facade.

   

4. 4Casa de Cervantes

   Cervantes spent his last years in houses in this quarter, and his biographers place the last one at the corner of Calle del León and what was then Calle de Francos, where he died in 1616. The house was in ruins and was demolished in 1833; the chronicler Mesonero Romanos mourned it in print and King Ferdinand VII proposed that the state buy it, but the owner refused. A relief bust and an inscription went up on the new building in 1834, and the street was renamed Calle de Cervantes soon afterwards.

   

5. 5Calle del León

   In the 1600s this street was also called Calle del Mentidero, after the gossip corner where actors and theatre managers met and companies and plays were hired for the nearby playhouses. Quevedo, Lope, Rojas and Villamediana all wrote about the Mentidero de los Representantes. Cervantes lived in two houses on this street and died in the last, and the Nobel Prize winner Jacinto Benavente was born here in 1866.

   

6. 6Calle de las Huertas

   This street takes its name from the orchards that lay here in the 17th century, near the meadow of the Jerónimos. Cervantes is reported to have lived at number 16. Underfoot, verses by Nicolás Fernández de Moratín and a quatrain of a well-known Quevedo sonnet are set in gold letters in the paving.

   

7. 7Convento de las Trinitarias Descalzas

   Cervantes was buried in this convent's first chapel in 1616, and the convent is said to have paid his ransom when he was held captive in Algiers, which is why he was laid to rest here. The chapel was pulled down when the convent was rebuilt from 1673 and his remains were lost, until forensic scientists found them in 2015; they now lie in a tomb in the church. Lope de Vega's daughter Marcela became a nun here in 1621, and the funeral procession for her father passed the convent so she could say goodbye from a window.

   

8. 8Calle de Quevedo

   This short lane joins Calle de Cervantes to Calle de Lope de Vega. It was called Calle del Niño until 1848, when it was named for Francisco de Quevedo, who owned a house at number 9. Quevedo and the poet Luis de Góngora were long-time rivals who traded bitter satires, and one account of their feud says it ended with Quevedo buying the house Góngora lived in just to throw him out; Góngora went home to Córdoba in 1626 and died there the next year.

   

9. 9Casa-Museo de Lope de Vega

   Lope de Vega bought this 16th-century house in 1610 and lived here until he died in 1635. The Royal Spanish Academy bought it in 1930, restored it and opened it as a museum in 1935, the year it was declared a national monument. Three Lope manuscripts owned by the Academy are shown inside, and some of the furniture on display came from the Trinitarian convent nearby.

   

10. 10Estatua de Cervantes

    The bronze statue of Cervantes by Antonio Solá was cast in Rome, reached Madrid in 1835 and now stands in front of the Congress of Deputies. It is described as the first statue in Madrid of someone who was neither royal nor religious. Its pedestal has bronze reliefs of Don Quixote and the lions and of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza led by the goddess of madness, and a time capsule with four volumes of Don Quixote was found when the statue was moved in 2009.

    

11. 11Fuente de Neptuno

    Ventura Rodríguez designed this neoclassical fountain for the Salón del Prado, and construction ran from 1777 to 1786. The sculptor Juan Pascual de Mena died in 1784 with only the figure of Neptune finished, and his pupils completed the rest. It stands on the Paseo del Prado, which is named for the old Prado de los Jerónimos, the meadows that marked the eastern edge of the built-up town.

    

12. 12Museo del Prado

    Juan de Villanueva designed this building in 1785, on the orders of Charles III, to house a natural history cabinet, and it opened to the public in November 1819 as a royal museum of painting and sculpture. Calle de Lope de Vega runs down to its Velázquez door. The Prado holds a version of Velázquez's portrait of Góngora, painted in 1622 on his first trip to Madrid; the museum catalogues it as a copy of the original, which is in Boston.

    

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