After lunch we visited one of the most beautiful and inconveniently located parks in the world, the Campo del Moro. It's a huge expanse of greenery, with well manicured lawns and beautiful flowers, as well as a fair amount of ornamental statuary and nice walking paths. It's directly behind the royal palace, as you can see, and is connected to the palace by a graceful set of steps and patios. Unfortunately the powers that be have for some reason made it impossible to get from the park to the palace, and located the only entrance to this park as far as possible from any people. It's a few miles' walk from the palace, as you walk around the endless walls surrounding the park, continually expecting an entrance that finally emerges once you've left the city behind. The only upside to this is, if you manage to get there, you'll have the park to yourself.

The Palace was built on the site of a small Arab fortress, built while the Arabs ruled almost all of Spain. For seven centuries Spain's history consisted of small Spanish kingdoms fighting to push back the Arab occupiers, culminating in a final victory in 1492 as the last Arab city, Granada, was reconquered. Madrid, sitting smack dab in the middle of the country, was reconquered much earlier, around 1000, and was one of many cities in the Spanish kingdom of Castile. Castile never had a proper capital though, with the Castilian king moving from one town to another with his court. But as Castile gradually grew through war and marriage by annexing the other half dozen Spanish kingdoms and evicting the Arabs, the court finally settled down, declaring Madrid the capital of all Spain in 1561. At the time it was a puny town, generally avoided for its terrible weather, but the king suffered from gout and Madrid's hot dry weather was just what the doctor ordered, so unlikely Madrid was catapulted to capital status. The first royal palace was built over the original Arab fort soon after, but that palace burned down, to be replaced by the current building in 1738.



Only about 30 of the palace's 2800 rooms are open to the public, which is probably enough. In general they're quite stunning in a usual palatial sort of way, but many of the rooms stand out by being completely coated in porcelain, often with a Chinese flavor to them.

We then left the welcoming embrace of the Plaza del Oriente to the forbidding glare of the Plaza de la Armeria, which is the front yard of the palace. The palace was built in the 1730's after the previous palace burned down, and is the largest in Europe, with 2800 rooms. It's facade is pretty severe, which tends to be a Spanish characteristic, since the country spent most of its history and wealth fighting Muslim and Protestant "infidels" on behalf of its strict brand of Catholicism. The arched wall with the menacing clouds forms the right border of the plaza, with views over the great plateau on which Madrid was built, and the more elaborate building sprouting from Somchai's head is the Cathedral, which forms the left border. The truck parked in front of the palace isn't ordinarily there, but it was closing for three months for renovations right after our visit, so we stumbled into some good timing there.