Salesas Reales & Santa Bárbara: The Queen and Her Harpsichord
Why is it significant?
In front of you rises a grand church of stone, with a dome and a sculpted façade, and beside it a long palace that now houses Spain's Supreme Court. Both were born from the fear of one woman: a queen who did not want to grow old alone.
Key Facts
| Place | Salesas Reales & Santa Bárbara: The Queen and Her Harpsichord |
|---|---|
| Address | Calle del General Castaños 2, 28004 Madrid, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.42440, -3.69390 |
| Part of Walk | From the Dos de Mayo to La Movida: Malasaña & Chueca, Madrid's Rebel Quarters |
| Generated | Generated |
In front of you rises a grand church of stone, with a dome and a sculpted façade, and beside it a long palace that now houses Spain's Supreme Court. Both were born from the fear of one woman: a queen who did not want to grow old alone.
Barbara of Braganza was a Portuguese princess who married the future Ferdinand the Sixth of Spain in 1729. They never had children, and Barbara knew what usually happened to a widowed queen in Spain: a convent, exile, or a quiet life at the mercy of her successor. So she built her own retreat, a royal convent for the Salesian nuns, raised between 1750 and 1757 at enormous cost. Madrileños mocked it with a famous pun on her name: barbarous queen, barbarous taste, barbarous expense.
And yet this is the perfect place to end a walk about music. Barbara was a gifted keyboard player, and her teacher in Lisbon was Domenico Scarlatti, one of the great composers of the century. He followed her to Spain, stayed in her service for the rest of his life and wrote more than five hundred keyboard sonatas, many surely for her fingers. He died in Madrid in 1757. At the same court sang Farinelli, the most famous castrato in Europe, who had come to Spain to soothe King Philip the Fifth with the same few arias night after night, and who later staged dazzling operas for Ferdinand and Barbara.
The irony: Barbara died in 1758, before her husband, and never lived in her retreat. Ferdinand, broken by grief, died the following year. Both lie in this church. In 1870 the nuns were gone, and the convent became the Palace of Justice. Today Spain's highest court sits where a queen once planned to listen to her music in peace.
From the cannons of 1808 to the guitars of 1980, from Chueca's waltzes to Pride anthems and a queen's harpsichord sonatas, these streets have always been loud. Step inside the church if it is open, stand still for a moment... and listen.