The Retiro Park or Buen Retiro Park, popularly known as El Retiro, is a historic garden and public park located in Madrid, Community of Madrid, Spain.
Considered one of the main tourist attractions of the city, it has architectural and landscape figures from the 17th to the 21st century, among which the Monument to Alfonso XII, the Palacio de Cristal del Retiro, the Palacio de Velázquez, the Estanque Grande, the Parterre, the Gate of Philip IV, the Royal Astronomical Observatory and the Fountain of the Artichoke stand out; and even earlier, such as the hermitage of San Pelayo and San Isidoro, of Romanesque origin.
The park is located at the edge of the city centre, near both the Puerta de Alcalá and the Museo del Prado.
History
In 1505, the Jeronimites monastery was moved to a new Isabelline Gothic-style building at the present-day site of the Church of Saint Jerome the Royal. The royal family had a retreat built as part of the new church. King Philip II of Spain (ruled 1556–1598) moved the Spanish court to Madrid in 1561. Philip had the Retiro enlarged under the direction of his architect Juan Bautista de Toledo, who also formally laid out tree-lined avenues.
It was built in the first half of the 17th century within the landscaping project developed for the Buen Retiro Palace, a former royal possession created by the Count-Duke of Olivares (1587-1645) for the enjoyment of Philip IV (1605-1665), of whom it was his favorite. Its use as an urban park dates back to 1767, the year in which Charles III (1716-1788) allowed the public to enter for recreational purposes and, definitively, from 1868, when it came under the ownership of the Madrid City Council.
Due to the damage caused by the War of Independence (1808-1814), its current appearance is the result of interventions carried out in the 19th and 20th centuries, although original layouts and elements from the 17th and 18th centuries survive.
With a surface area of 118 hectares (1,180,000 m²) and a perimeter of 4.5 km, it administratively belongs to the Retiro district, named after the park. It is delimited to the north by the streets of Alcalá and O’Donnell, to the south by the street of the poet Esteban Villegas, to the west by Alfonso XII and to the east by Avenida de Menéndez Pelayo.
It is protected as a Property of Cultural Interest (BIC), a legal figure that every declaration of historic garden has in Spanish regulations and since July 2021 as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, together with the Paseo del Prado and the Barrio de los Jerónimos, forming part of the so-called Landscape of Light. Within its limits live more than 19,000 trees, representative of 167 species,6 including six specimens included in the list of singular trees of the Community of Madrid.
Madrid: full guide
- Administrative structure
- Architecture
- Churches and Cathedrals
- Entertainment
- Monuments
- Museums
- Parks and gardens
- Restaurants
- Shopping and markets
- Squares
- Streets
- Transport
See here Pyrenees travel guide
See here France travel guide
See here Spain travel guide
