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Las calles del casco antiguo son muy estrechas.

Las calles del casco antiguo son muy estrechas.
The streets of the old town are very narrow.
From Lesson 319:In the old town (el casco antiguo, la fuente, la manzana)·Spanish (Spain)

Questions & Answers about Las calles del casco antiguo son muy estrechas.

Why is casco antiguo translated as old town? Doesn't casco mean helmet?
You are exactly right that casco often means helmet! However, in Spain, el casco antiguo or el casco histórico is a common set phrase used to describe the historic center or oldest part of a city or town. Think of it as the original core that the rest of the city was built around.
Why do we use son instead of están here?
We use son (from the verb ser) because being narrow is a permanent, defining physical characteristic of these streets. You use estar for temporary states or locations, but for the inherent design or shape of a street, you always use ser.
Is there a rule to know that calles is feminine, since it does not end in -a?
Nouns ending in -e (and their plurals in -es) do not follow a strict gender rule, so their gender simply has to be memorized. Because calle is feminine, we must use the feminine article las at the start of the sentence and the feminine plural adjective estrechas at the end so that everything agrees.
Why does the sentence use del instead of de el?
Whenever the preposition de is followed directly by the masculine singular article el, they must merge into the single word del. Because casco is a masculine singular noun, we use del to smoothly say of the without pausing between words.

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