The Casa de Campo is a forest area declared a Site of Cultural Interest as a Historic Site and is located in Madrid, Community of Madrid, Spain, the capital of Spain. It is the largest public park in the municipality. Located to the west of the city, it belongs to the administrative area of Casa de Campo, in the district of Moncloa-Aravaca. It borders to the south with the district of Latina and to the west with the municipal district of Pozuelo de Alarcón.
The park is practically attached to the El Pardo mountain and has an area of 1,722.6 hectares, including the land of the Villa de Madrid Country Club, which is part of its surface. It doubles the size of Chapultepec Forest in Mexico City, the Boulogne park in Paris, and almost doubles the size of the Monsanto Forest Park in Lisbon.
It is five times larger than New York’s Central Park and 6.5 times larger than London’s Hyde Park. It was built on the site of a country house of Renaissance origin, from which it takes its name, which was historically the property of the Spanish Crown and a royal hunting ground.
After the proclamation of the Second Republic, it was ceded by the State to the people of Madrid on May 5, 1931, and has been open to the public ever since.
The complex was declared a Site of Cultural Interest by the Community of Madrid in 2010. The regulations of the General Urban Development Plan of the Madrid City Council of 1997 classify it as a historic park, along with the Retiro Park, the Oeste Park, the Quinta de la Fuente del Berro, the El Capricho Park, the Quinta de los Molinos, the Quinta de Vista Alegre, the Campo del Moro and the Royal Botanical Garden.
Inside there are various facilities, such as the Madrid Amusement Park, the Madrid Zoo, and the Cable Car (which connects the Casa de Campo with the Oeste Park, on the other side of the Manzanares River), part of the IFEMA fairgrounds, the Madrid Arena multi-purpose pavilion, the Venta de El Batán (traditional place for exhibiting bulls in the days before their fight in the Las Ventas square). It has different sports areas.
The park can be accessed via the Teleferico, a gondola with a pick up point inside the Parque del Oeste on the west end of Madrid. The drop-off point houses a restaurant with an overlook of Madrid, playgrounds (both inside and outside), and access to Casa de Campo’s many trails. The park is connected to Madrid’s public transit system, including stations on lines 5 and 10 of the Madrid Metro.
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