Vivero de Estufas, El Retiro (historic greenhouse nursery)

Before 1889 the greenhouses, also known in Madrid as estufas, were scattered around the Retiro park and other parts of the city. The Vivero de Estufas was created in 1889 to bring them together in one place, along with the municipal maintenance workshops. According to Spanish Wikipedia, the nursery moved in 1890 to its present site in the south-west of the park, near the Fallen Angel fountain; the Royal Observatory stands nearby.

In 1956 the city of Madrid bought the iron-and-glass greenhouses of the Liria Palace, owned by the Dukes of Alba; the house now numbered 7 came from that palace. It is today one of Madrid's three municipal nurseries. Its site is part of the UNESCO-listed Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro, a landscape of arts and sciences, which Madrid calls the Paisaje de la Luz.

Greenhouse no. 1 has been turned into a small museum of farming and gardening tools. In May 2026 the daily El Debate reported that a 1965 building, formerly a manure store, was being converted into an interpretation centre, with a budget of 850,000 euros and seven months of work.

The Vivero de Estufas covers about 3.5 hectares according to the city (35,000 m²), or 3.97 according to Spanish Wikipedia. It brings together nineteen old greenhouses, which the municipality presents as a collection unique in Spain, and four modern ones. Around them survive the facilities of a traditional nursery: cold frames (cajoneras), shade houses (umbráculos), beds, old boilers and the workshops of the maintenance trades.

Wikipedia states that the iron-and-glass houses from the Liria Palace have a heating system of underground copper pipes connected to water boilers. The greenhouses are known by numbers, from no. 1, now a museum, to no. 7, from Liria, and stand beside the nursery's open-air growing areas.

The sources consulted name no architect for the group and give no construction dates for the individual greenhouses.

The nursery does not present a botanical collection in the manner of a garden, but a living production. According to Spanish Wikipedia, it supplies some 800,000 seasonal plants a year to the city's green spaces, provides about 700 floral decorations for municipal events and grows the indoor plants of council buildings. Pansies are a speciality, with around fifty varieties.

It also runs trials of new plant varieties, uses integrated biological pest control and supplies plants to neighbourhood associations; urban vegetable plots are cultivated on site. Greenhouse no. 1 houses a permanent exhibition of traditional gardening devoted to farming and horticultural tools.

The Vivero de Estufas lies in the south-west corner of the Retiro, at the glorieta del Ángel Caído; the nearest entrance is on Calle Alfonso XII, close to the Cuesta de Claudio Moyano. As the nursery is still a working site, it is open only to arranged visits, organised through the city's environmental education programmes and available by registration.

A visit combines well with the Fallen Angel fountain, the Royal Observatory, the Palacio de Cristal and, a few minutes' walk away, the Real Jardín Botánico and its historic glasshouses.