Royal Palace and Gardens

Three mismatched buildings define Plaza de la Villa, ranging from the medieval Casa de los Lujanes to the seventeenth century Casa de la Villa. The Casa de los Lujanes stands out with its pointed gothic doorway and a weathered stone tower…

The Catedral de Santa María la Real de la Almudena wears a striking, two-tone exterior of gray granite and white stone that sets it apart from the brick-heavy architecture nearby. Construction dragged on for over a century, beginning in…

The Royal Palace of Madrid wears a stark white limestone facade that spans over one hundred and thirty thousand square meters. It sits on the site of a ninth century fortress built by the emir of Cordoba, which burned to the ground on…

The Plaza de Oriente features a curved facade of stone buildings encircling a formal garden, centered on a bronze equestrian statue of King Philip the Fourth. King Joseph Bonaparte ordered its construction in eighteen eleven to provide a…

The yellow, hexagon-shaped building dominating the Plaza de Isabel Segunda is the Teatro Real. Queen Isabel the Second laid the first stone in eighteen eighteen, but the opera house did not open until thirty-two years later. Construction…

The Sabatini Garden features symmetrical boxwood hedges shaped into intricate geometric patterns. King Juan Carlos the First opened these gardens to the public in nineteen seventy-eight, decades after they were first planned. The site…

The Plaza de España features a massive stone monument to Miguel de Cervantes at its center, with bronze figures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza riding out toward the street. The square sits where a military barracks once stood until the…

The Temple of Debod stands as a cluster of ancient stone gates and walls salvaged from the Nile Valley. Built in the second century before Christ to honor the god Amun, it sat in the village of Debod for two millennia. When the Egyptian…