Retiro Park and the Paseo del Prado

UNESCO World Heritage Site (Paseo Del Prado And Buen Retiro, A Landscape Of Arts And Sciences, Inscribed 2021), An Eighteenth Century Public Promenade And A Former Royal Garden Opened To The Public In The Nineteenth Century · Madrid, Madrid

Madrid's answer to having no river worth speaking of, and a World Heritage Site only since 2021, which makes it one of the newest inscriptions in Spain. The Paseo del Prado is a tree-lined boulevard laid out in the eighteenth century as a public promenade with fountains, at a time when European cities did not generally build such things for ordinary people, and the Retiro behind it was a royal pleasure garden opened to the public in the nineteenth century. UNESCO listed the two together as an early example of a city planned around shared green space. The Retiro holds a boating lake, a glass and iron palace built for an 1887 exhibition, a formal rose garden and what is claimed to be the oldest tree in Madrid. The Prado, the Reina Sofia and the Thyssen all stand on the boulevard and have their own rows. All of this is free, which is worth saying plainly in a city where the museums standing on it are among the most expensive tickets in Spain.

Plaza de la Independencia, Madrid, Madrid, 28001, Spain

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The structure: the PASEO DEL PRADO is a public street and never closes. THE RETIRO DOES CLOSE AT NIGHT and its gates are locked, with noticeably SHORTER WINTER HOURS, which catches people expecting a park that stays open. IT ALSO CLOSES ENTIRELY IN HIGH WIND because of branch fall. The Palacio de Cristal and the Royal Botanical Garden keep shorter daytime hours. The three museums keep their own, including a Tuesday closure at the Reina Sofia.

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