Logbook · 8 places

What to see and do in Leganés

What to see and do in Leganés (Área Metropolitana, Madrid): 8 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 4 Monuments · 1 Nature · 1 Curiosities · 1 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of Leganés

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Spain › Community of Madrid › Área Metropolitana › Leganés

What to see and do in Leganés

Leganés
Village
Leganés is a municipality of around 195,000 inhabitants in the metropolitan area of Madrid, eleven kilometers southwest of the capital, the fourth most populous town in the region; it was founded in 1280 as Legamar, in the time of Alfonso X, and in 1345 it was incorporated as a hamlet into the alfoz of Madrid, until in 1627 Philip IV created the Marquisate of Leganés and turned it into a seigneurial town. In the mid-20th century it grew through immigration and became a commuter town. It preserves the hermitage of Nuestra Señora de Butarque, from 1536, Churriguera's baroque altarpiece in San Salvador, and the Barracks of the Royal Walloon Guards, which Sabatini raised in 1783 and which today houses Carlos III University. The popular nickname of its residents, pepineros, recalls its past as an agricultural town.
Hermitage of Nuestra Señora de Butarque
Monument
Built in 1536 in the deserted village of Butarque and already cited in the topographical Relaciones of Philip II, it guards the patron saint of Leganés; every 14 August the image is carried in procession to the parish church of San Salvador.
Santa Isabel Psychiatric Hospital
Curiosity
Opened in 1851 and considered the first asylum properly so called in Spain, it occupies an extensive building of Neo-Mudéjar air whose popular name, the Leganés madhouse, ended up entering Spanish colloquial speech.
Park of Polvoranca
Nature
A semi-urban park of some 150 hectares in the municipality of Leganés, one of the largest in the Community of Madrid, laid out around the Recomba stream and the lagoons of Mari Pascuala and de los Sisones. It sits on the land of the former deserted village of Polvoranca, a medieval hamlet of which only the ruins of the church of San Pedro remain; its inhabitants gradually abandoned it during the nineteenth century, and in 1849 it was absorbed by Leganés. The present park began to be built in 1986 on what had been an area of cereal crops. It combines a botanical garden with more than 400 species from around the world, an arboretum of unusual species, a dehesa area, and artificial and natural lagoons with marsh and riverside vegetation that today attract numerous waterfowl, with an observatory for watching them.
Church of San Salvador de Leganés
Monument
A church whose construction dates back to the first half of the 16th century and which opened for worship in 1700; its main altarpiece, completed around 1720, is the work of José de Churriguera. It also preserves an organ designed by José de Verdalonga and is the foremost piece of Leganés's religious heritage. In the mid-19th century, Pascual Madoz's Diccionario geográfico-estadístico-histórico described it as a parish church dedicated to the Saviour, with a curato de término parish priest under state patronage, a lieutenant, three chaplains and a beneficiary appointed by the archbishopric. Its altarpieces have been attributed to José Benito de Churriguera, and the church was declared a bien de interés cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), with the rank of monument, on 28 August 2024.
Barracks of the Royal Walloon Guards
Monument
Built in 1783 on the orders of Carlos III under the direction of Francisco Sabatini to quarter the Walloon Guards, the great brick and granite barracks has housed departments of the Carlos III University of Madrid since the end of the 20th century.
Hermitage of San Nicasio
Monument
A small 18th-century chapel, built between 1772 and 1780 to a design by the architect Ventura Rodríguez, commissioned by the Marquess of Leganés, at what was then the western entrance to the town. Rebuilt in the 1950s, it still stands and has given its name to the neighbourhood that surrounds it today, one of the most traditional in Leganés. It is counted among the architect's minor works that best illustrate the refined classicism of the Madrid Enlightenment.
The first modern asylum in Spain
Historical milestone
The National Asylum of Santa Isabel opened in the old palace of the marquises of Leganés and received its first forty-four patients in April 1852. It was the first state psychiatric establishment in the country.