Spain’s Royal Palace - Wow!

For three centuries, Spain’s royal family has called Madrid’s Royal Palace home. It is Europe’s largest palace with 3,418 rooms and almost 1.5 million square feet. It’s Europe’s third greatest palace after Versailles and Vienna’s Schonbrunn.

It started out as a wooden fortress but that burnt down and the Palace that is there now was started in 1738 and completed almost 18 years later, in 1764.

It is filled with luxurious tapestries, gorgeous chandeliers, frescoes, priceless porcelain and a bronze decor covered in gold leaf. The palace is still used as the ceremonial palace for formal state receptions, royal weddings and … for tourists. We only saw 22 of the rooms and it took us 2 hours to gawk at the splendours in these rooms and to do a lot of walking.

The walls between the rooms are very wide. Apparently, these hid service corridors for servants, who could scurry about, unseen.

We weren’t allowed to take photos in the palace even though Chris asked every attendant that he saw if we could. LoL. The good thing is that people have posted photos of the rooms so I have included some of these photos.

Once we left the palace, we went across the open-air courtyard to the Royal Armoury. The photos are in the next footprint.Read more