Retiro Park, Madrid: free audio guide, boats and opening hours

Retiro Park (Parque del Retiro, or El Retiro) is Madrid’s great historic garden: 125 hectares and more than 15,000 trees next to the Puerta de Alcalá, with a boating lake, the Crystal Palace and the Fallen Angel fountain. It is free, open every day from 6am, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2021. This free audio guide lasts about 6 minutes and walks you round from the lake.

What the Retiro Park audio guide covers

Start it on the edge of the big lake, facing the Alfonso XII monument, and pause it whenever it tells you to walk. The route is roughly 1.5 km through the middle and south of the park, with 5 stops:

Retiro Park opening hours and closures for wind or snow

El Retiro is open every day and entry is free. From October to March it opens from 6am to 10pm; from April to September, from 6am to midnight. Dog areas open at 7:30am.

What is worth knowing before you go is that the park can shut because of the weather. Madrid City Council runs an alert protocol, last updated on 18 June 2026, driven mainly by wind gusts, because strong wind brings down branches. It has 4 levels:

When the forecast high is above 35 °C, the wind thresholds are lower. Alerts go up 2 hours in advance on the 22 screens at the entrances, in Spanish and English, and on the council’s X account, @MADRID.

Rowing boats on the lake and the Alfonso XII monument

The Estanque Grande, the big lake, was dug between 1634 and 1636 as the centrepiece of the Buen Retiro palace gardens. The court staged sea battles on it and went boating, and in the 18th century the singer Farinelli performed here for King Philip V. On its shore stands the Alfonso XII monument: a curved double colonnade around a central tower topped by Mariano Benlliure’s equestrian statue of the king, unveiled by his son Alfonso XIII in 1922. The viewpoint inside its column, 97 steps up, can only be climbed on the council’s free Pasea Madrid guided visits.

The rowing boats are run by the city’s Estanque del Retiro sports centre, which has 100 of them:

Here is a 4-minute look at El Retiro:

The Crystal Palace and the Palacio de Velázquez, both free

About 5 minutes’ walk south of the big lake, beside a smaller pond, stands the Crystal Palace (Palacio de Cristal), the iron and glass glasshouse of 1887. It is closed inside for restoration, and outside it is wrapped in Andrea Canepa’s canvas Fardo, which stays up until 1 January 2027. It has its own audio guide:

Free audio guidePalacio de Cristal, Madrid

A few steps on is the Palacio de Velázquez, built between 1881 and 1883 for the National Mining Exhibition by the same architect, Ricardo Velázquez Bosco, with the ceramicist Daniel Zuloaga: brick in 2 tones, tiles, and iron and glass vaults, on a footprint of 73.80 by 28.75 metres. Both palaces are exhibition spaces of the Museo Reina Sofía, and the Velázquez reopened on 24 June 2026 after its refurbishment.

The Fallen Angel fountain, the Rose Garden and other corners

Head south along the Paseo de Coches and you reach the roundabout of the Fallen Angel fountain (Fuente del Ángel Caído). The sculpture is by Ricardo Bellver, who made it in 1878 for the Paris Exposition Universelle: the rebel angel at the moment he is cast out of Paradise. The city acquired it, Francisco Jareño designed a fountain pedestal for it, and the whole thing was unveiled in 1885. Madrid is often said to be the only city with a monument to the devil.

Close by is the Rosaleda, the rose garden laid out in 1915 by Cecilio Rodríguez, the city’s head gardener: more than 4,000 rose bushes among pergolas. Before the roses there was a pond here that froze in winter, and Madrid went ice-skating on it. It is at its best in May and June.

If you still have energy, there is more:

• A 627-year-old olive tree, planted in a meadow by the Puerta del Ángel Caído gate; it dates from around 1396 and is the oldest tree in the park, older than the bald cypress of the Parterre, said to have stood there since 1630.
• The Bosque del Recuerdo (Forest of Remembrance), a hill planted with olive trees in memory of the victims of the terrorist attacks in Madrid on 11 March 2004.
• The Casa del Pescador (Fisherman’s House) and the Montaña de los Gatos, an artificial hill from 1820, in Ferdinand VII’s old private garden at the corner of O’Donnell and Menéndez Pelayo: little follies where the king came to rest.

History of Retiro Park: from royal palace to World Heritage

The park began as the garden of the Real Sitio del Buen Retiro, the monarchy’s second residence in Madrid, a great 17th-century palace built next to the Jerónimos monastery. In the Peninsular War, French troops turned it into barracks and left most of it in ruins. In 1868 a decree handed it to the City Council as a public park, and it has belonged to the people of Madrid ever since.

On 25 July 2021 UNESCO added it to the World Heritage List together with the Paseo del Prado, as Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro, a landscape of Arts and Sciences; in Madrid it is called the Landscape of Light (Paisaje de la Luz). The Retiro is the largest part of that landscape, which also takes in the Royal Botanic Garden and the Cibeles fountain.

For a long, unhurried walk through the park, this virtual tour lasts over an hour:

Getting to Retiro Park and what to see nearby

On the Puerta de Alcalá side you go in through the Puerta de la Independencia gate, on Plaza de la Independencia; from there the big lake is about 10 minutes’ walk. By metro: Retiro (line 2), on Calle de Alcalá; Ibiza (line 9), on the east side; and Estación del Arte or Atocha (line 1), to the south. At the boat dock, the jetty is step-free and 2 boats have a rear gate for wheelchair users. Allow 2 hours at an easy pace, and 1 more if you take a boat.

Leave by the Puerta de la Independencia and the Puerta de Alcalá is right in front of you, with its own audio guide:

Free audio guidePuerta de Alcalá, Madrid

Walk down Calle de Alcalá for about 10 minutes and you reach Plaza de Cibeles:

Free audio guidePlaza de Cibeles, Madrid

All our Madrid audio guides are on the Madrid page.