The oldest tree in Madrid

Among the low hedges of this French garden stands a swamp cypress from Mexico that, according to the city, has been growing here since roughly 1630, which makes it almost four hundred years old and the oldest tree in Madrid.

The fact that the city's oldest tree happens to be a Mexican one tells you something about where Spain was sending its ships in that century, because it arrived on the same shipping routes that would carry plants to the royal botanical garden a century and a half later. It has also survived everything that happened to this ground afterwards, including the French occupation, when Napoleon's troops turned the park into a fortress and almost nothing of the palace was left standing.

The garden around it is called the Parterre, the only French garden in the Retiro, laid out under Philip V, who came from Versailles and felt things could do with being a little more formal here.

We keep to the path heading east, until we reach a broad avenue lined with statues on either side.