Green Madrid
The parks of Madrid, Spain
Parque del Retiro
The vast (350-acre) park on the eastern edge of Madrid's center (on the far side of the Prado) is packed with Madrileños strolling the tree-lined paths past rose gardens, statues, fountains, street performers, and an 1887 Crystal Palace.
Parque del Oeste (Parque de la Montaña)
This small, lofty park overlooking Madrid's western 'burbs is centered around perhaps
the oddest thing in all Madrid: the Templo de Debod, a 2nd century BC
Egyptian temple set in the middle of a long reflecting pool. It was slated
to be swallowed by the waters backed up behind the Aswan Dam, so rather
than have it disappear forever under the new lake created by the dam that
Spanish engineers had helped build, the Egyptian government donated the
whole kit and caboodle to Spain in 1969 as a sort of thank you gift (to
which Spain must have replied with a mutter "What would have been wrong
with a nice card? Do they have any idea how much it's going to cost to
mail this sucker home?"). 
Campo del Moro
These terraced, formal gardens sloping down to the west of the Palacio Royal to the river seems small at first, but enjoys some wonderfully hidden nooks and crannies: small ponds inhabited by pairs of white or black swans, shady woods under a tangle of spreading tree branches, and tall hedgerows that create narrow alleys and small, private lawns. I was sitting at the edge of one of these one day, enjoying the surprising silence and solitude, when a woman on horseback sauntered through the break in the hedge on one side, rode slowly across the lawn, and disappeared through the break on the other side. I jumped up to see where she had gone (this was, after all, a smallish park in the middle of downtown Madrid), but she had vanished.
Casa del Campo
Grab the teleférico cable car (about $3 round-trip) from Paseo Pintor Rosales over the Manzanares River to this wild parkland and former royal hunting preserve west of the city. It's huge, so if you just want to escape from depressingly urban Madrid for a while, its easy to avoid the glitzier sights and activities here, such as the zoo (adm), small amusement park (adm), lake with its row boats, sports complex, and other attractions to keep Madrileños families occupied on the weekends.
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This article was last updated in January 2007. All information was accurate at the time.
Copyright © 1998–2010 by Reid Bramblett. Author: Reid Bramblett.
