El Retiro Park

El Retiro began as a royal escape. In the 1630s the Count-Duke of Olivares gave Philip IV land on the eastern edge of Madrid for a second palace, the Buen Retiro — the "good retreat" — and its gardens were laid out by Cosimo Lotti, who had worked on the Boboli Gardens in Florence. For much of the Spanish Golden Age it was the stage of court life, with plays and later Italian operas performed among its ponds and canals. Most of the palace was destroyed during the Peninsular War, when French troops built a citadel in the grounds; two buildings survive, the Casón del Buen Retiro and the Hall of Realms. In 1868, after the revolution that toppled Isabella II, the park passed to the city, and it has been Madrid's great public garden ever since.

Today it covers about 118 hectares, and its landmarks are spread along broad avenues. The large pond, where rowing boats circle, is closed on one side by the monument to Alfonso XII, a semicircular colonnade crowned by an equestrian statue. The Palacio de Cristal, a glass-and-iron pavilion built for the Philippine Islands Exhibition of 1887 by Ricardo Velázquez Bosco, reflects in its own little lake, and his Palacio de Velázquez, built for the national mining exhibition of the 1880s, now hosts exhibitions too. The Rose Garden was created in 1915 by the head gardener Cecilio Rodríguez, who also shaped the gardens that bear his name, and beside it the Fountain of the Fallen Angel (1922), with Ricardo Bellver's statue of Lucifer inspired by Milton's Paradise Lost, is often said to be the only public monument to the devil.

Look for the details. A Mexican cypress in the Parterre is considered the oldest tree in the park and possibly in Madrid, and an olive tree planted in 2023 is estimated to be more than six centuries old. The Paseo de la Argentina is lined with statues of kings carved in the 1750s for the Royal Palace. The Forest of Remembrance commemorates the 191 victims of the 2004 Madrid train bombings. In 2021 the park and the neighbouring Paseo del Prado were inscribed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Getting there

The park lies at the edge of central Madrid, next to the Puerta de Alcalá, whose Plaza de la Independencia has the main entrance, and a short walk from the Prado. Metro stations include Retiro (Line 2), right at the park, Ibiza (Line 9) and Atocha (Line 1). Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD) is about 13 km away.