Rastro de Madrid

This guide to the Rastro de Madrid traces the street's name back to 1495, when a new slaughterhouse sent butchers dragging carcasses downhill to tanners waiting on what became Ribera de Curtidores, leaving a trail behind them. It follows the neighborhood through Cervantes and Lope de Vega's day, and the tanners, shoemakers and candlemakers pushed toward Lavapies by the smell. A 1611 dictionary entry by Covarrubias Orozco is one of the guide's earliest written traces of the name.