The Glass Pavilion
Ricardo Velázquez Bosco, architect; Alberto de Palacio, engineer (Velázquez Bosco 1843 to 1923) · 1887
A palace made almost entirely of glass rises above a small lake in the middle of the Retiro. The plan is a Greek cross with a rounded apse, an iron skeleton painted white carries the panes, and a shallow dome sits over the crossing. Ricardo Velázquez Bosco built it in 1887 for the Exhibition of the Philippines, a colonial fair held in the park, and it was meant to be a hothouse full of palms, orchids and other tropical plants shipped from Manila. The exhibition also brought a group of indigenous Filipinos who were displayed in huts around the lake, an episode that Madrid now remembers with discomfort.
Walk around the outside before you go in. The portico at the entrance has slender iron columns with classical capitals, and along the base runs a band of ceramic tiles by Daniel Zuloaga, the great ceramicist of the period, with foliage and the arms of the city. The building borrows the idea of the Crystal Palace that Joseph Paxton built in London for the Great Exhibition of 1851, but it is far smaller and more delicate, closer to a garden temple than to an exhibition hall. Inside, the effect is of standing in a lantern; the light changes minute by minute with the clouds, and the trees outside become part of the architecture.
The pavilion was restored in the nineteen seventies and again more recently, and since the nineteen nineties it has been managed by the Museo Reina Sofía as a space for contemporary art. It is one of the most photographed buildings in the city and has appeared in films and countless wedding pictures. A memorable detail is easy to miss: look at the iron brackets under the roof, cast with tiny decorative scrolls that nobody was ever meant to notice, a sign of how much care went into a building that was supposed to be temporary.
Did You Know? The pavilion was built in only a few months for the 1887 Exhibition of the Philippines and was never meant to stand for more than a season.
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