Calle de Preciados (or simply Preciados), is a public

pedestrian street Pedestrian zones (also known as auto-free zones and car-free zones, as pedestrian precincts in British English, and as pedestrian malls in the United States and Australia) are areas of a city or town reserved for pedestrian-only use and in whi ...

in central

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

, Spain, which spans from

Puerta del Sol The Puerta del Sol (English: "Gate of the Sun") is a public square in Madrid, one of the best known and busiest places in the city. This is the centre ('' Km 0'') of the radial network of Spanish roads. The square also contains the famous clo ...

Plaza de Santo Domingo The plaza de Santo Domingo is a public square in the city of Madrid, Spain. History and description The square covers an area of . It is located in the Palacio neighborhood, itself belonging to the Centro District. Located in the northern e ...

via

Plaza de Callao The Callao Square ( es, plaza del Callao) is located at the centre of the Spanish capital of Madrid. History and description Shaped in 1861, the square was formally opened in June 1866; its name remembers the May 1866 battle of Callao between t ...

, where it takes a bend. It is about 500-metre long.

History

The street was built on land previously occupied by the

Convent of Las Descalzas Reales The Convent of Las Descalzas Reales ( es, Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales) is a royal monastery situated in Madrid, Spain, administered by the Patrimonio Nacional. History The ''Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales'', literally the "Monaste ...

and the harvest plots of the . According to tradition, the name of ''Preciados'' (in use at least since the 17th century) comes from two brothers ('the Preciados') who installed in the area after buying plots to monks and thrived by working as (an archaic job description pertaining the certification of

weights and measures A unit of measurement is a definite magnitude of a quantity, defined and adopted by convention or by law, that is used as a standard for measurement of the same kind of quantity. Any other quantity of that kind can be expressed as a multip ...

). Already in 1905, the street was an important retail area, with a predominance of the tailoring and textile sector, shoe and footwear, pharmacy, as well as catering businesses. Throughout the 20th century, commercial activity boosted in the wake of the growth of

Galerías Preciados Galerías Preciados, S.A. was a Spanish chain of department stores founded in 1943 by José "Pepín" Fernández Rodríguez. Named after the street on which it stood, Galerías Preciados was, along with El Corte Inglés El Corte Inglés S.A. ( ...

and

Corte Inglés Corte may refer to: * Corte, a commune in Corsica, France ** Arrondissement of Corte, a district in Corsica, France * USC Corte, a French football team People with the surname * Frank Corte, Jr., a U.S. businessman and politician See also * ...

department stores (by the purchase of neighbouring businesses). Starting in December 1967, the street started being closed to traffic on a temporary basis for the Christmas season owing to the large flow of pedestrians. On 20 October 1973, the permanent pedestrianisation of the street (together with Calle del Carmen's) was formally inaugurated by Mayor . Galerías Preciados could not cope with El Corte Inglés' growth and ended being acquired by its rival in 1995. As of 2018, Preciados is one of the busiest pedestrian streets in Europe.

References

{{authority control Sol neighborhood, Madrid Streets in Madrid