[Panoramic view of the Casón del Buen Retiro]

Today I would like to invite you to take a short walk through one of the most emblematic and privileged places in my city, Madrid: the Paseo del Prado and the Retiro Park, recently nominated by UNESCO as New Heritage of Humanity, under the qualification of Passage of Light.

[Old Ritz Hotel. Currently Hotel Oriental Ritz]

A qualification, certainly very successful, because within it are collected a series of cultural elements of the first order, whose importance is evident for the number of visitors who visit the city annually, who are by no means indifferent.
[Main entrance to the Prado Museum]

[Statue of Francisco de Goya]

In front of one of the oldest and most luxurious hotels in Madrid, the Ritz Hotel - recently inaugurated, after years of remodeling - the Prado Museum is another of the many period buildings in the city, of enormous cultural interest, which houses a of the largest art galleries in the world.

[People waiting to see the Torna Viaje Exhibition]

In front of the queues of visitors that daily fill the surrounding promenades and gardens, the imposing statue of Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, one of the great masters of universal painting and by default, an eminently visual chronicler of the time in which it was his turn To live, he looks with eternal nostalgia at the place where a good part of his prolific work is preserved.

Work, which appears along with that of many other masters of painting, both Spanish and foreign, and whose contemplation satisfies the cultural hobbies of any lover of Art, however severe they may be, to the point of provoking what is literary and psychologically it is known as the 'Stendhal syndrome'.
[Culture awakens expectation]

A place of calm, the surrounding gardens not only host a good part of the Prado Museum's facilities, but also a multitude of people who enjoy them, even lying down to exercise the pleasure of reading or simply to experience the joy of feeling part of it. of a historical and pleasant place to let time wander.

[Rivaling in beauty]

Above one and the other, one of the jewels of Gothic art in Madrid, with its pointed towers and the magic of its gargoyles and pinnacles, demands the attention of the passer-by: the old monastery of San Jerónimo el Real, popularly known as the Jerónimos.

[Francisco de Goya and the Jerónimos Monastery]

Climbing the small slope that leads to the Retiro Park, another historical building, which reminds us of the old temples and sanctuaries of immemorial Greece, welcomes the visitor surrounded by buildings and palaces from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and that today it serves as an archive and library: the Casón del Buen Retiro.

[Panoramic view of the monastery of San Jerónimo el Real]

And a few meters further on, crossed the popular Calle de Alfonso XII, one of the entrances to the Retiro Park, which ends at the Great Pond, but through whose gardens and groves, with its magnificent fountains, one of the most extraordinary and colorful modernist palaces of modern Spanish architecture.

[Fantasy architecture: modernist mansion]

Although brief, however, I hope it was a pleasant walk and an excuse to invite you to meet him personally and above all, to enjoy sensually these places, which after all is what provides nourishment and diversity to the spirit.

[Retiro Park: Nature, ornamentation and fantasy]

NOTICE: Both the text and the accompanying photographs are my exclusive intellectual property and therefore are subject to my Copyright.

[Modernist panoramic view from inside the Retiro Park]