The Palace of Zarzuela

The complex sits within Monte del Pardo near the Royal Palace of El Pardo and comprises two main buildings: the historic Zarzuela palace and a modern Pavilion of the Prince located several hundred metres away. The original building presents a sober rectangular plan in Madrid Baroque style, capped by a pitched slate roof and flanked by two side corridors with arcades. A porticoed wall (a wall with a covered walkway supported by columns) remains an element conserved during mid-20th-century reconstruction. The 1958 works kept the primary building volume intact and inserted an extra storey.

The external grounds were laid out as an Italian-style garden with tiered fountains arranged across three terraces, a tree nursery and an orchard. These seventeenth-century garden schemes were recreated during the 1958 rehabilitation, and the terraces with their water features form a principal component of the palace setting. In 1975 two lateral wings were joined to the main block, the left enlarged for private living quarters and the right adapted for administrative use.

Inside, the palace is organised over three principal levels. The ground-floor complex includes attic spaces above and a semi-basement that accommodates kitchen services and support offices, with a basement below. The main floor contains the king’s office and aides’ rooms, the library, a reception chamber and a dining room. Bedrooms, guest suites and studies occupy the uppermost level. Service features on the estate include a small chapel, a sports area and a helipad.

Decorative and movable items reflect layers of occupation. Early interior adornment featured paintings and sculptures from the seventeenth century, while inventories from the late eighteenth century list works by Paul de Vos and paintings associated with the schools of Rubens and Bosch; later rearrangements introduced tapestries, porcelain and neoclassical furnishings. The king’s office is lined in light wood and displays portraits, including one of Charles III, a Salvador Dalí canvas titled The Cosmic Athlete, family photographs and a brown leather swivel chair. The main audience room is faced in wood and hung with paintings and tapestries; on its table sit a gilded crucifix, an edition of the Spanish Constitution from 1980 and a Bible dated 1791 dedicated to Charles IV, opened to Numbers chapter thirty.

The Pavilion of the Prince is a modern residence completed in 2002 with an area reported variously as 3,150 square metres and 1,800 square metres. It features large windows and a French-style fireplace, interior finishes combining wallpaper and smooth stucco, travertine marble and teak in bathroom fittings, and stainless-steel surfaces in the kitchen. Unlike the historic palace, the pavilion uses roof tiles rather than slate. The palace complex bears visible traces of war damage from the 1936–1939 conflict, but the mid-century reconstruction conserved the building’s core structural frame and the restored gardens.

In the late eighteenth century it was recorded that many original paintings had been moved to other royal residences.