El Palacio Real

Palacio Real de Madrid

"The Royal Palace of Madrid (or Palacio Real de Madrid) is the official residence of the Spanish Royal Family located on Calle Bailén in downtown Madrid. Very close by are both a cathedral and a theater that were placed for the convenience of the Spanish Royal Family. A castle was first built there in the 1500s and then burned down. In the 1700s, King Philip V ordered a new one to be built, the start of the present day one. Today, the Spanish Royal Family choses to live in a more modest estate named Palacio de la Zarzuela in the outskirts of Madrid. Today, the Palace is open to public tours in limited sections of the grand building. Sometimes the Royal Palace will be closed or tours limited in the event of an official state event as they still take place in the Royal Palace. Today we were fortunate enough be there when there wasn't an official state event as was the case for the exchange group last year.

From when the Royal Alcazar was built to when it burned down, it underwent many renovations to update it with the current styles of architecture and to what
the king preferred. They were influenced by things such as the Renaissance and King Louis XIV's grand Palace of Versallies in France. It also housed a large number of famous paintings. When the fire occured on Christmas Eve of 1734, many of these paintings were lost. A precious few such as Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez survived the fire. The Royal Palace seen today was built on the ruins of the old Royal Alcazar.

The Palace itself was quite grand. The exterior was very elaborate, complete with a sizeable courtyard. One of the students remarked that it reminded them of Paris. The inside was one highly decorated room after the other. Señora Adair pointed out to us the stylistic differences from room to room as they've been renovated according to what the king liked. Overall, it was a very beautiful palace and I wish we had more time to tour more of it!

Catedral de Santa María La Real de La Almudena

When the capital of Spain was moved to Madrid in 1561, they needed a cathedral in the city as there wasn't one. However due to the large amount of cathedrals already present in the country and Spain spending a lot of money on other cities, the building of a new cathedral was postponed to until 1879 and wasn't concecrated by the Pope until 1993. Through it you can see the various architecture styles through the years they built it: Neo-Gothic, Neo-Romanesque, and Modern.

The inside was very beautiful as was the exterior. However it was odd to see a modern cathedral as it was a very different style and much more bland than lets say the Toledo Cathedral which we saw the week before. One of my favorite parts was seeing the elaborate sculpture of the Virgin of Almudena as that was very opulent. ¡Una catedral muy hermosa pero no es la más hermosa de España por mi! Pero todos de los estudiantes les gustaba la visita a la catedral, tiempo bien empleado. (A cathedral very beautiful but not the most beautiful one of Spain in my opinion! But all of then students liked the visit to the cathedral, time well spent.)

Fun Facts:

La Almudena is built on top of a medival mosque that was destroyed in about 1083.

The marriage of King Felipe VI to Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano took place in la Almudena in 2004.

The Royal Palaca had a square footage of 1,450,000 sq ft with 3,418 rooms.

By floor area, the Royal Palace is the largest palace in Europe. 

One of the Spanish Queens had nightmares about the statues on the top of the building falling in and on top of her so she had many removed from the roof and placed around the palace. Only few remain today." --Emily