🇪🇸Spain·Open to the public (exhibitions)
Palacio de Cristal
Retiro Park, Madrid
- Year
- 1887
- Architect
- Ricardo Velázquez Bosco
- Style
- Iron and glass on a brick base
- Dimensions
- Dome over 22 m high
« A colonial-era greenhouse turned cathedral of contemporary art. »
Built in record time to serve as a pavilion for exotic plants at the 1887 Philippines Exposition, when the Philippines was still a Spanish colony, the Palacio de Cristal follows a Greek-cross plan inspired by the Victorian greenhouses of Paxton and Burton. Its iron structure, cast in Bilbao, rests on a brick base adorned with ceramic tilework. Now an exhibition space of the Reina Sofía museum, it has lost its botanical function but retained its role as a glass cathedral at the heart of the Retiro.
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40.41° N, 3.68° W