Royal Palace of El Pardo

Listen for a moment. Out here, north of the city, the traffic of Madrid fades. In its place you hear wind moving through holm oaks, a few birds, and gravel shifting under your shoes. The air often smells of dry earth and resin. Ahead of you stands a long, pale building with grey slate spires at its corners. A dry moat runs around it. It feels less like a city palace and more like a royal retreat. That is exactly what it was meant to be.

This is the Royal Palace of El Pardo. It sits in the village of El Pardo, roughly fifteen kilometres from central Madrid. Around it spreads the Monte de El Pardo, a large protected forest of holm oak and scrub. For centuries this land was a royal hunting ground. Deer and wild boar still live in these woods. The forest is the real reason the palace exists. Kings came here first for the hunt, and only later for comfort.

The story begins in the early fifteenth century. King Henry the Third of Castile built a hunting lodge on this site. It was a modest, fortified place, closer to a small castle than a palace. Little of that first building survives today. But the idea it started lasted for six hundred years. Again and again, Spanish rulers chose to escape Madrid and come to these woods.

In the sixteenth century, the Emperor Charles the Fifth rebuilt the lodge in grander form. Look at the shape of the building as you walk around it. It follows a square plan, with towers at the corners and a central courtyard. The slate spires on the towers are a northern European touch. They became typical of royal buildings under the Habsburgs, the dynasty that ruled Spain at that time. You will see the same style at other royal sites around Madrid.

Here is a story many visitors never hear. In 1604, a fire swept through the palace. It destroyed much of the royal art collection kept inside, including a famous gallery of portraits. It was a terrible loss for Spanish art. Yet one great painting by the Venetian master Titian survived. Today it hangs in the Louvre in Paris. It is still known by the name of this place, the Pardo Venus. A small part of El Pardo travelled very far.

After the fire, King Philip the Third ordered repairs and new decoration. Painters worked on the ceilings and walls of the royal rooms. Some of those painted ceilings survive, and they are worth a slow look on your visit. Notice how the colours shift from room to room. Each monarch left a layer. The palace you see today is not one design. It is a long conversation between generations of kings.

The biggest change came in the eighteenth century. King Charles the Third loved to hunt, and he spent long seasons here. He asked the Italian architect Francesco Sabatini to enlarge the palace. Sabatini roughly doubled its size. He copied the older Habsburg style so carefully that the new parts blend with the old. Stand back from the facade and try to find the join. Most people cannot see it.

Now a second surprise, and this one is about thread and wool. Inside the palace hang tapestries made at the Royal Tapestry Factory in Madrid. Many were woven from full-size painted designs, called cartoons. One of the artists who painted these designs was a young Francisco de Goya. Long before his dark and famous later works, Goya painted cheerful scenes of picnics, dances and games for the walls of El Pardo. Some of his original cartoons are now in the Prado Museum.

The twentieth century brought a very different resident. After the Spanish Civil War, General Francisco Franco made El Pardo his home. He lived and worked here from 1940 until his death in 1975. For Spaniards, the name El Pardo still carries that memory. During those decades, the palace was the centre of political power in the country. It is a complicated legacy, and many visitors feel it as they walk these rooms.

Today the palace belongs to the Spanish state. It is managed by Patrimonio Nacional, the body that cares for the royal heritage sites. It also has a working role. Visiting heads of state often stay here during official trips to Spain. This means the palace is still used, not just preserved. On some days it closes to the public for this reason. It is a good idea to check before you travel out here.

Visits to the interior are usually guided, and groups move through the rooms together. Take your time with the details. Look up at the painted ceilings. Look at the clocks, the chandeliers and the furniture from different royal periods. Notice the light coming through the tall windows, and how it falls on the tapestries. The rooms feel intimate compared with the huge Royal Palace in the city centre. This was a house for living, not only for show.

When you step back outside, give the village a little time. El Pardo has a quiet, small-town feel. The Manzanares River runs nearby, the same river that later passes through Madrid. Local restaurants are popular with Madrid families at weekends. Nearby you can also find the Casita del Principe, a small royal pavilion built for a prince in the eighteenth century. The forest around you also contains the Zarzuela Palace, the home of the Spanish royal family, though it is not open to visitors.

Before you leave, stand once more near the moat and look at the long facade. Count the windows. Follow the line of the roof to the dark spires at each corner. Six centuries of history sit in this one building. A hunting lodge, a Habsburg retreat, a Bourbon country house, a dictator's residence, and now a guest house for presidents and kings. All of it is in front of you, in stone, slate and plaster.

As you walk away, listen again. The wind is still moving through the oaks. The forest that first brought kings here is still all around you. The palace changed many times. The woods stayed almost the same. Perhaps that is the quiet lesson of El Pardo. Power came and went. The land, the light and the birds remained.