Village
Aranjuez is a Real Sitio of about 63,000 inhabitants located in a broad valley at the southern edge of Madrid, at the confluence of the Tagus and Jarama rivers, which irrigate, together with a network of historic irrigation channels, market gardens of strawberries and asparagus. At the end of the 12th century it passed to the Order of Santiago, and from 1489, incorporated into the Crown, it became a resting place for the monarchy, which built there the Palacio Real and its gardens of the Isla, the Príncipe and Isabel II. In the mid-18th century Ferdinand VI founded the city ex novo after repealing the restrictions that prevented those outside the Court from residing there. In March 1808 it was the setting for the mutiny that brought about the fall of Godoy and the abdication of Charles IV in favour of Ferdinand VII. Its cultural landscape has been a World Heritage Site since 2001.
Monument
A royal residence built in the Real Sitio de Aranjuez, on the banks of the Tagus, commissioned by Philip II to plans by Juan Bautista de Toledo which Juan de Herrera completed. In the 18th century it was enlarged by Ferdinand VI and Charles III with the wings that close off the parade ground, as it appears today. Outside the grounds, within the Jardín del Príncipe, stands the smaller palace of the Casa del Labrador. In its chapel, on 25 September 1808, the Junta Central Suprema y Gubernativa del Reino was formed. Now managed by Patrimonio Nacional, it houses the Museo de la Vida en Palacio and heads the cultural landscape inscribed by Unesco in 2001.
Monument
A pleasure pavilion built between 1794 and 1803 for Carlos IV with the involvement of Juan de Villanueva and Isidro González Velázquez; its Platinum Room combines mahogany with bronze and platinum inlay, and the interiors were designed by Jean-Démosthène Dugourc.
Monument
A pavilion built beside the landing stage of the Jardín del Príncipe that holds six royal vessels, among them the launch of Carlos IV, built in Cartagena and decorated by Salvador Maella, and the gondola attributed to Felipe V, in fact from the time of Carlos II.
Monument
The plaza de San Antonio, also known as the plazuela de la Mariblanca, is an arcaded square designed by Santiago Bonavía around 1750 as the first urban nucleus of the Real Sitio de Aranjuez; its arcaded galleries, completed by Jaime Marquet after the architect's death, link the Casas de Oficios y de Caballeros with the Casa de Infantes, and the church of San Antonio and the garden of Isabella II also open onto it. Its popular nickname comes from the fountain of Venus, known as the Mariblanca, which adorns its northern end, a work by Juan Reyna installed in 1762; before that there stood another fountain there, that of the King, with an image of Ferdinand VI, which Charles III ordered removed in 1760.
Monument
A royal chapel built on the south side of the main square that gives access to the Real Sitio de Aranjuez, commissioned by Ferdinand VI, who dedicated it to San Antonio de Padua in place of the former Oratorio of Philip IV. Construction began in 1752 to designs by Santiago Bonavía, and Charles III later had it enlarged with a square section topped by a two-pitched roof. It has a circular central plan and is topped by a lead-clad onion-shaped dome that dominates the far end of the plaza de San Antonio. After Bonavía's death in 1767, the architect Jaime Marquet built the galleries that link it to the nearby buildings. Royal Decree 1412/2002 declared the church and its adjoining arcades a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), with the rank of monument.
Monument
A bullring whose construction was ordered by Charles IV in 1796 and which was opened on 14 May 1797, designed on a reduced scale in imitation of the old bullring near the Puerta de Alcalá, with capacity for nine thousand spectators; a fire damaged it in 1809 and Ferdinand VII rebuilt it twenty years later. It remains one of the oldest bullrings still in use in Spain and today has a capacity of nine thousand five hundred people; since 2001 it has belonged to the Unión de Plazas de Toros Históricas. Every 30 May, the feast of San Fernando, it hosts a major bullfight, and it has served as the setting for films such as Hable con ella, by Pedro Almodóvar, and Blancanieves, by Pablo Berger.
Nature
A landscape garden of some 145 hectares and three kilometres long, begun in 1772 for the future Charles IV on the banks of the Tagus; Pablo Boutelou directed its layout between 1775 and 1784, and Juan de Villanueva later worked on it too, alongside Boutelou until 1808. The garden brought together under the new landscape style earlier works, such as the vegetable gardens laid out between 1553 and 1561 under Philip II or the landing stage built under Ferdinand VI. It is entered through fifteen gates from the calle de la Reina, among which the gate of the Embarcadero stands out, attributed to Villanueva, with granite Ionic columns that once flanked two statues now in the Museo del Prado. It has been a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) since 1931 and a World Heritage Site since 2001, within the Cultural Landscape of Aranjuez.
Nature
The jardín de la Isla is a historic garden north of the Palacio Real de Aranjuez, on an artificial island of about 25 hectares between the río Tajo and an artificial arm or canal, and it is one of the principal works of Spanish Renaissance garden design, together with the Casa de Campo in Madrid. Promoted by Philip II as a representation of paradise, it was laid out by Juan Bautista de Toledo from 1561, with works that continued until 1564 and were carried on by Juan de Herrera, who arranged its fountains in 1582; the water that fed them came from the Mar de Ontígola reservoir. The garden is entered by several bridges dating from the 18th and 19th centuries. It has been a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) since 1931 and has formed part of the Cultural Landscape of Aranjuez, a World Heritage Site, since 2001.
Nature
A natural area protected since 1994 in the municipality of Aranjuez, with 629 hectares bringing together one of the finest holm oak woods in the Comunidad de Madrid and the artificial lake that Philip II had dammed in 1572, today naturalised as the Mar de Ontígola wetland, next to the El Regajal estate, a Mediterranean semi-desert upland. On its gypsum slopes 75 of the 225 Iberian butterfly species have been recorded; in 1979 the IUCN ranked El Regajal as the world's fifth priority for lepidopteran conservation. The marshy wetland gives shelter to waterfowl. The Mar de Ontígola dam, which supplied water to the Real Sitio from the 16th century until the mid-20th, numbered Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera among its designers, a landmark of the hydraulic engineering of its time.
Historical milestone
A popular uprising that took place between 17 and 19 March 1808 in the streets of Aranjuez, in protest against the policy of Manuel Godoy, valido of Charles IV. The uprising ended with the capture of Godoy and the abdication of Charles IV, on 19 March, in favour of his son the Prince of Asturias, who would reign as Ferdinand VII, barely weeks before the outbreak of the Peninsular War. Contemporaries mythologised that 19 March as the beginning of the so-called Spanish Revolution, although historians such as Emilio La Parra hold that the uprising was far from spontaneous: aristocrats of the Ferdinand faction are said to have distributed money, recruited people and spread rumours to stir up the population.
Curiosity
The Concierto de Aranjuez, for guitar and orchestra, was written by Joaquín Rodrigo in early 1939 in Paris, drawing inspiration from the gardens of the Real Sitio; it is the composer's best-known work and the first concerto for guitar and orchestra in 20th-century Spanish music. It premiered on 9 November 1940 at the Palau de la Música Catalana with Regino Sáinz de la Maza as soloist and the Orquesta Filarmónica de Barcelona; the Madrid premiere followed on 11 December at the Teatro Español. It consists of three movements —Allegro con spirito, Adagio and Allegro gentile— the Adagio, slow in tempo and with an intimate melody introduced by the cor anglais, being the most popular of the three and the most often covered by opera and popular-song singers.
Activity
The tren de la Fresa is a tourist train run by the Fundación de los Ferrocarriles Españoles between Madrid and Aranjuez, recalling the Madrid–Aranjuez line, the second railway built on the Iberian Peninsula, opened on 9 February 1851 by Queen Isabella II, who gave up land of her own for the railway to reach Aranjuez. It has run since 1984 in wooden carriages with historic rolling stock, sometimes hauled by steam locomotives, and on board the strawberries that gave it its name are handed out, a traditional product of the riverside market gardens that this same line once carried to Madrid.
Activity
The Fiestas del Motín are held in the first days of September in Aranjuez and commemorate the events of the Motín de Aranjuez of 1808, which brought about the fall of Godoy and the abdication of Charles IV in favour of Ferdinand VII. They were first performed on 5 September 1982 in the parade ground of the Palacio Real. Among its highlights is the night-time assault on Godoy's palace, when residents, with drums and torches, re-enact his arrest and burn his belongings in a fireworks display, and the appointment of the Amotinado Mayor, an honorary title that was first held, in 1984, by Camilo José Cela. The two-hour performance brings together around a hundred and fifty residents in front of the Palacio Real. Since 2014 the festival has been declared a Fiesta de Interés Turístico Internacional (a national-level tourism-interest designation in Spain).
Historical milestone
Between 18 and 19 March 1808, a crowd of soldiers and townspeople protested against the policy of Manuel Godoy, “favourite” of Charles IV, and stormed his house next to the Real Sitio, forcing his dismissal. The pressure continued until, on the night of 19 March, Charles IV abdicated the Crown in favour of his son, acclaimed that same day as Ferdinand VII: for the first time in Spain's history a king saw his own son seize the throne from him as the result of a popular uprising. Although the historiographical debate remains open, several historians agree that the uprising had little of the spontaneous about it: aristocrats of the Ferdinandine party, who a year earlier had failed in the El Escorial plot, handed out money, recruited people and spread rumours to stir up the population.
Historical milestone
Isabella II presided on 9 February 1851 over the opening of the line promoted by the Marquis of Salamanca, the second built in the peninsula after the Barcelona to Mataró line. It was the first step of the railway from Madrid towards Andalusia and the Levante.
Food and drink
The meadow watered by the Tagus and the Jarama turned the Real Sitio into the court's market garden, and strawberries remain the product most identified with the city. They are eaten on their own or with cream and mark the arrival of spring.
Food and drink
Asparagus grown in the sandy, cool soils of the riverside market garden, one of the municipality's historic irrigated crops alongside the strawberry. It is harvested in spring and prepared boiled, grilled or in menestra.