Royal Botanic Garden of Madrid

What it is

The Real Jardín Botánico is a working research institute of the CSIC, Spain's national research council, that happens to be open to the public. Fernando VI ordered its creation on 17 October 1755, on a site called the Huerta de Migas Calientes beside the Manzanares, stocked with more than 2000 plants that the botanist and surgeon José Quer had gathered on his travels through the Iberian peninsula. From 1774 Carlos III gave instructions to move it to the Paseo del Prado, where it opened in 1781; Sabatini, the king's architect, and Juan de Villanueva, who built the Prado museum next door, took charge of the project. The three stepped terraces, the iron railing around the perimeter, the pergolas and the Villanueva Pavilion all date from those years, and the plants were laid out by the method of Linnaeus. The garden has been shrinking and recovering ever since. Two hectares were cut away in 1882 for the building the Ministry of Agriculture still occupies, leaving the eight hectares of today, and a cyclone in 1886 brought down 564 valuable trees. It passed to the CSIC in 1939, was declared an artistic garden in 1942, closed to the public in 1974 for a deep restoration and reopened in 1981. The living collection now holds more than 5500 species.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What's inside

The collection is spread over three terraces that step down towards the Paseo del Prado, and the walk between them is the shape of a visit. The rose garden occupies the four central squares of the lowest terrace, next to the Puerta del Rey, and holds 296 specimens arranged in the ten sections of the genus Rosa, from wild species and old garden roses through to varieties that mattered in the history of rose breeding. The tree collection runs to nearly 1500 specimens. There is a bonsai collection of more than a hundred trees and shrubs on its own terrace, and an olive collection that includes the individual tree used for the first complete sequencing of the olive genome. Under glass, the Santiago Castroviejo greenhouse is the modern exhibition house, opened in 1993, and the older Graells greenhouse dates from the 1857 reforms. The Villanueva Pavilion holds temporary exhibitions and contains the lecture chair from which Antonio José Cavanilles taught; there is a second exhibition room named for María Teresa Tellería. Four self-guided itineraries are published: singular trees, an Andalusí route through fifteen plants of Islamic Spain, American dye plants, and a sensory route designed to universal accessibility criteria. The shop and cafe are inside the gate, so a ticket is needed to reach them.

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How long to spend

The garden publishes no suggested visit length, so ninety minutes is this guide's own figure rather than the operator's. Eight hectares on three terraces is a small site by botanical garden standards and a large one by central Madrid standards, and ninety minutes is what it takes to walk all three terraces without hurrying, spend ten minutes inside the Castroviejo greenhouse and read a reasonable number of labels. An hour is enough if the aim is the rose garden and the lower terrace only, which is the part nearest the Prado gate. Two to three hours is realistic for anyone following one of the published itineraries, sitting for a while, or visiting an exhibition in the Villanueva Pavilion on top of the garden itself. Two operator rules shorten a late visit and should be subtracted from any plan. Ticket sales and entry to the garden stop thirty minutes before the closing time, so arriving at the gate twenty minutes before closing is arriving too late. The box office, the bonsai terrace, the greenhouses, the exhibitions, the shop and the cafe all close thirty minutes before the gates, and at that moment visitors begin to be cleared from the garden.

Checked 2026-08-26

Season and crowds

The garden opens at 10.00 every day of the year except 1 January and 25 December, and the closing time changes with the month: 18.00 in January and February, 19.00 in March, 20.00 in April, 21.00 from May to August, 20.00 in September, 19.00 in October and 18.00 in November and December. The practical consequence is that a winter afternoon here is short. In January the whole visitable day is eight hours long and the last useful entry is 17.30, while in July the gate stays open until 20.30 and the last two hours are the pleasantest of the day, once the heat has gone off the terraces. Tuesday mornings between 10.00 and 13.30 are free, which also makes them the busiest hours of the week; anyone who would rather have the paths to themselves should pay the four euros and come at another time. The garden does not cancel its activities for bad weather, and the paths are earth, so after rain they carry mud and small hollows. Spring brings the rose garden into flower on the lowest terrace, and the monthly plant-of-the-month feature is the garden's own guide to what is worth seeing in each season.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Tickets

General admission is 4 euros per person. The reduced rate of 1 euro covers students aged 18 to 25, adults in large families and visitors over 65, all on production of proof, and groups of ten or more pay 2 euros each. Entry is free for under-18s, accredited teachers, CSIC staff, members of the Friends of the garden, ICOM members, accredited press, unemployed visitors with a certificate, disabled visitors as defined by Spanish law and, where the visit requires one, their companion; the proof has to be shown at the box office. Free entry also runs on Tuesdays from 10.00 to 13.30, and those free tickets are not issued online — they are collected in person at the box office on arrival. Tickets are sold at the box office at Plaza de Murillo 2 or through the garden's own site, entradas.rjb.csic.es, and the garden states plainly that it is not responsible for the mark-ups other online platforms add. Two operator pages differ on what four euros buys. The practical guide prices the ticket as excluding the Villanueva Pavilion exhibition and says some exhibitions carry a supplement of 2 to 5 euros; the ticket portal's own general-admission page says the ticket admits the holder to all exhibition rooms including the Pavilion. Ask at the box office.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Getting there

The garden stands at Plaza de Murillo 2, immediately south of the Prado museum and a short walk from the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen. Visitors enter only by the Puerta de Murillo, the gate facing the Prado; the door on Calle de Claudio Moyano belongs to the research building and is for staff and visiting researchers, so do not queue there. No car is needed and none is much use: the garden has no car park of its own, only the municipal car parks in the surrounding streets, and the whole Paseo del Prado is a walking route between three major museums. Metro serves it at Atocha and Estación de las Artes, on lines 1 and 2. Cercanías trains stop at Atocha on lines C3, C4, C5, C8, C8a, C8b and C10, which puts the garden within reach of the airport line and most of the commuter network. Buses 10, 14, 27, 34, 37 and 45 run along the Paseo del Prado, and buses 6, 19, 26, 32, 59, 85, 86, C1 and C2 stop at Plaza del Emperador Carlos V at the Atocha end. From the Prado's southern door the walk to the gate takes about two minutes.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What to watch out for

The garden asks to be treated as a museum of living things rather than as a park, and the house rules are stricter than a visitor expects of green space. Picnics are not allowed anywhere in the grounds and food must be kept to the cafe area; smoking is prohibited; walking is confined to the paths, with the beds and planted areas out of bounds; nothing may be picked from any plant; the animals, including the cats and ducks, are not to be fed. Bicycles, skates and balls are refused at the gate, dogs other than guide dogs are not admitted, and under-14s must be accompanied. Keep the ticket until the end of the visit. Groups mean ten people or more and must book in advance; a group of under-18s needs one adult for every 25 people; amplified sound is not allowed; and commercial guiding by anyone not employed by the garden is forbidden, with immediate expulsion as the stated penalty. Admission is not refunded in any circumstance short of the garden closing. On accessibility, the paths are narrow and made of earth, and the terraces are joined by stone steps and by ramps. Not every connection has a ramp, but every terrace can be reached by one; the Graells greenhouse is reached only by stone stairs, and the Villanueva Pavilion has a side ramp that staff will open on request.

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Photography

Informal photography is allowed throughout the garden, on the condition that it does not damage the plants or block the paths for staff and other visitors. Inside the greenhouses photographs are permitted but tripods and any other support or base are not, so the Castroviejo house has to be shot hand-held, which in practice means a fast lens or a raised sensitivity in the darker corners under the canopy. Exhibitions in the Villanueva Pavilion may not be photographed at all. Anything beyond a private snapshot needs permission in advance: wedding photography is arranged by fixing a date with the external relations service, commercial photography and video must be authorised through the same office, and press and broadcast requests go to the communications office. Photographs published on the garden's own site belong to the institution and its photographers, and reuse requires written permission. For light, the season decides more than the hour. Between May and August the gate stays open until 21.00 and the last hour before the terraces are cleared gives long, low light across the beds; in November through February the garden shuts at 18.00 and the good light falls in the middle of the afternoon. The terraces face the Paseo del Prado, so the low sun comes across them rather than into the lens.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Where it is

Nearby

External links

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