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What to see and do in Torrelodones

What to see and do in Torrelodones (Área Metropolitana, Madrid): 5 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 2 Monuments · 1 Curiosities · 1 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of Torrelodones

Towns near Torrelodones

Spain › Community of Madrid › Área Metropolitana › Torrelodones

What to see and do in Torrelodones

Torrelodones
Village
Torrelodones is a municipality in the northwest of the Community of Madrid, 29 kilometers from the capital, located between the Sierra de Guadarrama and the Madrid metropolitan area, with around 25,000 inhabitants and an average altitude of 845 meters. It owes its name to a watchtower of Andalusi origin, part of an old Muslim defensive system, which still stands above the village and gives its name to one of the region's tourist routes; another, the Imperial Route, recalls the road Philip II traveled in the 16th century between Madrid and the Escorial. It belonged to the seigneury of the Casa de Vega, and obtained town status in 1728. El Canto del Pico, with its palace, was a Republican command post during the Civil War, and the Colonia neighborhood grew up beside the station opened in 1864.
Watchtower of Torrelodones
Monument
The atalaya of Torrelodones, also called torre de los Lodones, is one of the best-preserved Islamic watchtowers in the Madrid region, erected during the Umayyad period of Al-Ándalus, between the ninth and eleventh centuries, to watch over one of the roads towards the north-western passes of the sierra de Guadarrama, within the defensive system of the Marca Media, centred on Toledo. It holds the status of Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) and shows the alterations of a 1928 restoration, carried out after the partial collapse of its walls; it takes its name from the lodón, a tree abundant in the area, and gave its name to the hamlet that grew up at its foot. The painter Pier Maria Baldi depicted it in 1668, on his way to El Escorial, and in 1979 it suffered minor damage from a time-bomb attack.
Palace of el Canto del Pico
Curiosity
Eclectic house-museum built between 1920 and 1922 for the Count of Las Almenas beside the granite crag that gives it its name, at an altitude of 1,011 metres; declared a Monumento Histórico-Artístico (Spain's heritage designation in force between 1931 and 1985) in 1930, it was the headquarters of the Republican Army.
Dam of El Gasco
Monument
An unfinished wall 53 metres high and 154 metres long, whose ruins stand at the meeting point of the municipalities of Torrelodones, Galapagar and Las Rozas de Madrid, in the northwest of the Comunidad de Madrid. It was designed between 1787 and 1799 by the military engineer Carlos Lemaur, of French origin, as a regulating dam for the Canal del Guadarrama, a work financed by the Banco de San Carlos and charged to the Hacienda Real of Charles III. The canal, which was likewise never completed, was meant to be navigable over 667 kilometres and to link Madrid with the Atlantic Ocean by joining the waters of the Guadarrama, the Manzanares, the Tagus at Aranjuez and the Guadalquivir at Seville. A storm burst the south side of the dam and the work was permanently abandoned on 15 May 1799.
The railway colony
Historical milestone
The opening in 1864 of the halt on the Northern line attracted Madrid families who built hotels and villas a kilometer and a half from the village. That summer settlement, the Colonia, ended up being the municipality's urban center.