Real Jardín Botánico: The King's Scientific Garden
Why is it significant?
Find the tall gateway with its columns and pediment, the Puerta de Murillo, and peer through the railings at the terraces of trees and flowerbeds rising gently behind.
Key Facts
| Place | Real Jardín Botánico: The King's Scientific Garden |
|---|---|
| Address | Plaza de Murillo 2, 28014 Madrid, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.41150, -3.69070 |
| Part of Walk | Madrid's Landscape of Light: The Paseo del Arte, the Prado & the Retiro |
| Generated | Generated |
Find the tall gateway with its columns and pediment, the Puerta de Murillo, and peer through the railings at the terraces of trees and flowerbeds rising gently behind. You are looking at one of the great scientific gardens of eighteenth-century Europe, and the key to understanding this whole boulevard.
The garden was founded in 1755 by Ferdinand the Sixth, but on another site, by the river. His half-brother Charles the Third moved it here in 1781, and he had a much bigger plan. Charles was an Enlightenment king, and he wanted the old promenade of the Prado to become an avenue of science: a botanical garden, an astronomical observatory on the hill behind, and a grand building for a Cabinet of Natural History. The architects were Francesco Sabatini and Juan de Villanueva, the two stars of his reign.
From this garden, Spain sent botanists across its empire. Expeditions went to Peru and Chile, to New Granada in today's Colombia, to New Spain in Mexico, and around the Pacific with the Malaspina voyage. They brought back seeds, dried plants and thousands of watercolour drawings, so precise you can count the hairs on a leaf. Many of those drawings are still kept here, in the garden's archive.
And now the twist. That grand Natural History building Charles commissioned, a few steps north of this gate, never served its scientific purpose. It was still unfinished when Napoleon's troops occupied Madrid, and they used it as a cavalry barracks and stripped the lead from its roof. When it finally opened, in 1819, it was filled with something else entirely... paintings.
Cross the little square to the long building of brick and granite, and walk around to its main front facing the boulevard. Look for the bronze man sitting on a pedestal with a palette in his hand. He is waiting for you outside the greatest picture gallery in Spain.