Calle Jaén lies within the colonial core of La Paz, a city founded by Spanish authorities in 1548 amid existing Andean communities and routes. The narrow street took shape close to plazas, churches, markets, government institutions, and residential compounds. Adobe and masonry houses opened inward around courtyards that organized domestic work, storage, trade, and family life. Indigenous and mixed-ancestry laborers, artisans, servants, merchants, officials, and religious institutions produced the colonial city beneath the dramatic slopes of the valley.

The street's buildings changed repeatedly as households subdivided property and adapted rooms for workshops, rentals, shops, and lodging. Spanish colonial society imposed tribute, forced labor systems, racial categories, and Catholic authority, yet Aymara traditions and networks persisted throughout La Paz. Rebellions and sieges in the late eighteenth century exposed the city's dependence on surrounding Indigenous communities. Houses along streets such as Jaén witnessed political tension without necessarily serving as formal government monuments.

The street was later named for Apolinar Jaén, associated with the struggle for independence from Spain. La Paz became a major center of revolutionary activity, repression, and republican government during the early nineteenth century. Independence did not erase colonial inequalities, and older houses continued to accommodate changing owners and tenants. New architectural fashions transformed much of central La Paz, but the short street retained an unusually concentrated group of low-rise buildings and an intimate scale increasingly rare in the expanding capital.

Twentieth-century preservation and museum development reshaped Calle Jaén into a cultural destination. Restored façades, paving, lighting, and restrictions on vehicles emphasized its colonial appearance. Several municipal museums interpret local history, precious metals, war, customs, art, and the life of notable residents. This concentration protected buildings that might otherwise have been demolished, but it also curated the street for visitors, sometimes simplifying the complex labor, Indigenous presence, poverty, and continual adaptation that characterized colonial and republican urban life.

Calle Jaén now functions as both public street and museum quarter. Conservation must maintain adobe, timber, roofs, drainage, painted surfaces, and courtyard plans while allowing cultural institutions and nearby residents to use the area. Its significance does not rest on an untouched sixteenth-century scene; most visible fabric reflects several periods of rebuilding. The street is valuable because it makes the scale of older La Paz tangible and provides a setting in which colonial rule, Indigenous endurance, independence, urban modernization, and the modern creation of heritage can be interpreted together for residents today.