The Retiro Park
Various, from the seventeenth century royal gardens onward · Laid out from the 1630s; public park since 1868
The glass pavilion sits in the middle of the Retiro, the great park of central Madrid, and the park is as much a part of the visit as the building. It began in the sixteen thirties as the gardens of the Buen Retiro palace, a pleasure retreat built for Philip the Fourth by his minister the Count Duke of Olivares, where the court held plays, tournaments and mock naval battles on the big lake. The palace was largely destroyed during the Napoleonic wars, and the gardens were opened to the public in 1868 after the revolution that dethroned Isabella the Second. Ever since, the Retiro has been where Madrid goes to walk, row, read and be seen.
From the pavilion, paths lead through groves of horse chestnuts and cedars to the Estanque Grande, the large rectangular lake where rowing boats can be hired. On its east bank stands the monument to King Alfonso the Twelfth, a colonnade of white stone with a bronze equestrian statue, finished in 1922 and one of the grandest pieces of sculpture in the city. Nearby are the Paseo de las Estatuas, lined with kings of Spain, the rose garden, the Fallen Angel, said to be the only public statue of the devil, and the Casa de Vacas cultural centre.
The Retiro and the Paseo del Prado together were inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2021 as a landscape of arts and sciences, joining the park with the Prado, the Thyssen and the Reina Sofía into one cultural axis. For the visitor to the Palacio de Cristal this means that the walk from the museum's main building near Atocha is itself part of the experience. A memorable detail is the way the pavilion is hidden from the main avenues by trees, so that it appears suddenly at the end of a path, glinting through the branches.
Did You Know? The Retiro contains what is claimed to be the only public monument to the devil, the Fallen Angel of 1877, which stands at exactly six hundred and sixty six metres above sea level.
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