While Casa de Campo is a park walking on the wild side of western Madrid, its eastern counterpart, El Retiro Park, is Madrid's genteel, cultured take on park-life.
Long a preserve of royalty, El Parque de Retiro is where the Habsburgs, Europe's most powerful monarchs, came to play. Its giant pond hosted mock naval battles, its formal gardens saw elaborate and extravagant plays. Now it's the place you come to, to picnic, promenade and ponder – and maybe push the paddle-boat out, onto the waters of the Estanque del Retiro.El Retiro means 'retreat' and that's what King Phillip II planned to do here, in 1561, when he moved his court from Toledo to Madrid. He wanted a quiet garden around the nearby church that the royal family were to use. And under Phillip IV, in the 1630's, a proper Royal Palace grew up here. The gardens were extended to cover 121 hectares, and laid out to match the finest Rome gardens of the time.The result was a complex of formal Renaissance gardens, ponds, tree-lined avenues, canals and lakes – making it into one of the 'garden wonders' of the age. Since then, its fortunes have risen and fallen with the royal family's – it finally become public in 1868 – while gathering an increasingly impressive collection of statues. An engaging afternoon can be had tracking them all down.The best-known is the monument to King Alfonso XII, sat astride his horse, next to the Retiro pond. There are more regal statues along the Paseo de la Argentina, which is lined with 18th century Spanish Kings. And El Retiro has the dubious honour of hosting the only known public statue to the Devil – El Angel Caído by Ricardo Bellver. He was inspired by Milton's Paradise Lost to carve a representation of Lucifer, being cast from heaven.There's more art at the Palacio de Velázquez, a neoclassical 19th century building, originally built to house mining exhibits. The Palacio de Cristal, built at the same time in 1887, was by the same architect, Ricardo Velázquez. It is a splendid cross of arched glass panes, topped by a 21-metre high glass dome – and is now also used for artistic exhibitions. The culture slips into the musical too – the Banda Sinfónica de Madrid gives free concerts throughout the summer. Come to Retiro Park, and its guaranteed you won't have a 'cultural bone' left un-tickled.
