The palace axis
Lawn climbing to the full façade — Madrid's grand royal picture.
Bjaglin from Sweden — CC BY 2.0 · Pedro J Pacheco — CC BY-SA 3.0 es · Américo Toledano — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Américo Toledano — CC BY-SA 4.0
Site geometry: no entry from the crowded palace square, only a descent and loop to the river gate — so tourists settle for the upper terrace. Whoever descends wins the whole palace as a nearly private backdrop.
After the palace, walk Bailén south then right to the river — ten minutes to the gate. Or make it a station on the modern Madrid Río riverside walk. Sunset gilds the palace façade precisely from here.
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The Campo del Moro — "the Moor's field" — is the Royal Palace's garden falling towards the river, its name literal history: here the Almoravid army camped in 1109 attempting to retake Andalusi Mayrit, and the ground has kept their memory nine centuries. It is the quietest of Madrid's free jewels: twenty English-style hectares whose green axis climbs from the lower gate to the palace's full-height façade — the greatest view of the palace there is, and among its least visited. The Shells and Tritons fountains punctuate the axis, and free-roaming peacocks own the paths with complete royalty. Its only entrance is riverside below the bluff — the secret of its emptiness — so pair it with the revived Manzanares river walk, or descend into it after the palace visit.
Lawn climbing to the full façade — Madrid's grand royal picture.
Free flocks parading the paths.
The eighteenth-century jewel at mid-axis.
Paseo Virgen del Puerto, 28005 Madrid