Calle del Príncipe (Madrid)

Calle del Príncipe is a street in Madrid, Community of Madrid, Spain (in the so-called El Madrid de los Austrias) and within the Barrio de las Letras. It runs from Plaza de Canalejas to Calle de las Huertas, where it opens onto Plaza de Santa Ana.

It has a long literary and theatrical tradition; the first corrals de comedias in Madrid were opened here and the Teatro Español, formerly the Teatro del Príncipe, was still operating at the beginning of the 21st century. One of its several cafés, the Príncipe, hosted the nineteenth-century Parnasillo gathering, a meeting of romantic writers. Half a century later, the Café del Gato Negro hosted the gathering of the Nobel Prize winner for Literature Jacinto Benavente y Martínez, and one of its buildings housed its second headquarters as the Príncipe casino. At number 11 of the street the Danish photographer Christian Franzen Nissen had his studio.

History

In the map of Madrid of Philip IV of Spain, finished in 1656 by the Portuguese cartographer Pedro Teixeira, the street of Príncipe already appears with this same name; as well as in that of Espinosa. Although this does not resolve the certainty of which “prince” it refers to or in whose honour the street was given that name, everything seems to indicate that, as Mesonero Romanos explained, it refers to Philip II of Spain, on the occasion of his election as Prince of Asturias in San Jerónimo el Real in 1528, the year in which the Madrid chronicler places the creation of this street.

Be that as it may, the image that appears on the tile plaque that adorns the corners of the street, is the copy of the ceramist Alfredo Ruiz de Luna González of one of the portraits of Philip II that Tiziano Vecellio painted in 1551.