Palacio Real

On Christmas night in 1734, fire broke out in the old Alcázar, the fortress that stood here and where Spain's kings had lived for two hundred years. The flames kept going for four days. People flung paintings out of the windows to save whatever they could, and that is how Velázquez's Las Meninas survived, cut from its frame by all accounts. Hundreds of other works burned, along with the archive and the furnishings of an entire court.

On the very same spot, Felipe V had something built that could never burn like that again. The palace in front of you is made entirely of stone and brick, with masonry vaults and no wood anywhere in its structure, which was a remarkably expensive choice in the eighteenth century. Construction ran from 1738 to 1755, and Carlos III became the first king to actually move in, in 1764.

What came out of it is the largest royal palace in Western Europe, with more than three thousand rooms and a hundred and thirty-five thousand square metres, bigger than Versailles or Buckingham Palace. The current royal family doesn't live here. They stay in a much smaller house on the edge of the city, and this building is used for state visits and ceremonies, and for the rest of the year it belongs to visitors with a ticket.

We keep to the north side of the palace and head for the semicircular square behind it, where a row of stone kings stands waiting for you.