The Pardo Palace

The Pardo Palace

The Pardo Palace is one of the residence of the Spanish Royal Family. It’s main use now is the use to host other country’s Royal Members whenever they’re visiting Spain. We can find it in the Royal Place of ‘’El Pardo’’, which belongs to Madrid’s area.
It was built in the sixteenth century from a primitive building of the fifteenth century designed by Luis de Vega, the architect. Its current aspect corresponds to the reforms and extensions undertaken in the eighteenth century, at the request of King Carlos third, in which the architect Francesco Sabatini participated.
A part of its architecture values, the palace highlights its interior decoration, representative of different times and styles.

Sabatini built, to the east, a new building identical to the old palace and coalesced both through a pavilion that would house the lobby on the ground floor and the antechambers and dining room of the King on the first floor. The central courtyard of the new building was named "Patio de los Borbones", in opposition to the "Patio de los Austrias" of the old palace. To unify the whole, the red brick facade of the Habsburgs era was plastered and painted cream.
The Pardo then acquired an appearance more similar to that of a French articulated through pavilions and with roofs in a Mansard style.

Although Carlos Fourth hardly used the palace, he was responsible for entrusting Juan de Villanueva with the restoration, from 1806 to 1809, of the Royal Chapel and the House of Crafts, damaged by a fire.
Ferdinand VII refurbished the palace, in this case with furniture and clear empire inspiration. He was the last monarch who habituated him regularly and he also owes the systematization of the garden and the construction of the small bridge that connects the royal apartments around the Patio de los Austrias with the

Also, the lunchroom of Carlos Third became his personal office. In the famous reforms he made, we can highlight the introduction of the Mora Army as his personal guard.

Life in the palace was very complicated, people think living in a palace is a luxury and a place where you can just avoid everyday problems. However, this is not true at all, my grandfather had a very hard childhood in the palace, with constant guards, armed, walking around the place and no time to see his family in privacy.
Related with the architecture, the place was very cold and every single object of furniture had a massive value, so my grandfather and granduncles had to be very careful walking around the place.
Their rooms were massive, they were very uncomfortable and It took nearly 5 minutes to walk from their rooms to the nearest kitchen. Also, there were no elevators, which made walking upstairs a pain. However, despite all the inconvenient of living in a palace, they are proud of being part of history and all what that