Casa Museo Lope de Vega: The Monster of Nature at Home
Why is it significant?
Here, at number 11, an unremarkable brick front hides a whole seventeenth-century world: low rooms, a study lined with books, a tiny private chapel, and at the back, a small garden with fruit trees and a well. Lope de Vega bought this house in 1610 and lived in it until he died in 1635.
Key Facts
| Place | Casa Museo Lope de Vega: The Monster of Nature at Home |
|---|---|
| Address | Calle de Cervantes 11, 28014 Madrid, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.41440, -3.69740 |
| Part of Walk | Madrid's Barrio de las Letras: Cervantes, Lope de Vega & the Writers' Quarter |
| Generated | Generated |
Here, at number 11, an unremarkable brick front hides a whole seventeenth-century world: low rooms, a study lined with books, a tiny private chapel, and at the back, a small garden with fruit trees and a well. Lope de Vega bought this house in 1610 and lived in it until he died in 1635.
Lope was the superstar of his age. He claimed to have written well over a thousand plays, and even if he exaggerated, hundreds survive, along with novels and thousands of poems. People said that something was good by calling it de Lope, Lope-quality. Even Cervantes, who had little reason to love him, called him a monster of nature, and he did not entirely mean it as an insult.
Because they were rivals, and not friendly ones. Around the time Don Quixote appeared, Lope wrote in a private letter that no poet was as bad as Cervantes, nor anyone so foolish as to praise Don Quixote. History has had its revenge with a smile: Lope's house stands on a street named after Cervantes, and Cervantes lies in a convent on a street named after Lope.
Lope's own life was a drama no theatre would dare stage. He sailed with the Armada in 1588, married twice, had many lovers and several children, became a priest in 1614, and still fell passionately in love with a married woman, Marta de Nevares, who came to live with him in this house. His last years were dark: Marta went blind and lost her reason, his son drowned, and his daughter ran away. He ended his days here, in this quiet garden, writing until the end.
And that is where this walk ends: in the garden of the man who called Cervantes the worst poet in Spain, a few steps from the corner where Cervantes died, in a quarter that forgave them both and named its streets after them. Sit for a moment, if you can, and listen. Madrid is still writing.