Plaza de Oriente

This is known as the "3rd grandest royal residence of Europe" after Versailles and Schomburg, home of the huge Hapsburg clan in Vienna. Those monarchs "had to keep up with the Joneses" and this palace contains many ornate objects other than the rooms themselves; the "Chinois" room's interior decorating took 55 years to complete! Architecture, art and interior decorations are not completed overnight! The tour of the kitchen area on the lower floor was not available in English, one can only imagine the number of people, food and time it took to put on an event back then. When Francisco Franco, a fascist dictator died in 1975, King Juan Carlos I was returned as monarch and established a liberal constitution (it functions as a multi-party constitutional parliamentary democracy). He abdicated in 2014 and his son Felipe VI succeeded him. The Royal Monarchs live in a mansion near the palace but the palace itself is still used for special events including political ones. National Heritage manages assets ceded to the State by the Crown which includes eight royal palaces and their contents.

The Royal Palace of Madrid (Spanish: Palacio Real de M adrid) is the official residence of the Spanish royal family at the city of Madrid, although now used only for state ceremonies. The palace has 135,000 m2 (1,450,000 sq ft) of floor space and contains 3,418 rooms. It is the largest royal palace in Europe. The palace is on the site of a bygone Muslim-era fortress constructed by Emir Muhammad I of Córdoba in the 9th century that remained on the site until it burned down on December 24, 1734. A new palace was then built from scratch on the same site on behalf of the Bourbon dynasty. Construction spanned the years 1738 to 1755.Read more