The luxurious Royal Palace in Madrid today is one of the residences of the King of Spain. However, it is the fickle seat of the royal family. Noble people stay here only during official events and celebrations, the rest of the time the palace is open to tourists.
A distinctive feature of the palace, which became royal for the Spanish rulers, is considered to be its protracted construction and transformation, which changed in step with the times. So, the small fortification laid in due time by the Emir Mohammed, who ruled in these places in ancient times, during the reign of the Habsburgs expanded to the construction of a palace for the royal family.
The building was named the Old Castle and existed until the beginning of the eighteenth century. The violent fire left only ruins, in which, fortunately, representatives of the royal family were not harmed, but works of art and valuable documents were destroyed. This happened in 1734. A few years later, it was decided to build a new palace on the same site.
Back in 1735, King Philip V of Spain asked the architect Filippo Juvarra to design a magnificent royal palace. However, the Italian architect did not succeed in fulfilling the king's order due to his imminent death.
The construction of the palace was delayed. Only in 1738 work began. Another Italian, Giovanni Battista Sacchetti, became the architect. It was this master who designed the rectangular building with a courtyard in the center in the Italian Baroque style. But Giovanni did not bring the matter to completion. The last architect to complete the construction was Francesco Sabatini, under whose leadership the Royal Palace in Madrid was completed in 1764.
It should be noted that the interior decoration of the building, the furnishings and the interior have undergone changes for another thirty years.
So the palace became the new residence of the kings, in which Carlos III, Carlos IV, Fernando VII and Alfonso XIII lived.
The Royal Palace in Madrid covers an area of more than 100,000 square meters, has 3418 rooms, 50 of which can be viewed by tourists. The palace is a building of incredible beauty, which has been decorated and improved with the development of technologies and innovations in architecture.
