La Latina

This guide to La Latina in Madrid traces the neighborhood's namesake, Beatriz Galindo, a scholar who mastered classical Latin and Greek as a teenager, out-arguing the professors of Salamanca before Queen Isabella the First brought her to court to tutor the royal children, including a young Catalina who later became Catherine of Aragon. It follows Beatriz's marriage to a royal captain and the fortune she later spent on a convent and hospital for Madrid's poor, built near this stretch of old Calle Toledo. Wander the tangled lanes of Cava Baja and Cava Alta as you listen, toward the Sunday stalls of the Rastro.