Paseo de Carlos III

Whoever walks the Paseo de Carlos III has the railing of the Royal Botanical Garden on one side, and there lies the key to the name. The garden was not born here. Ferdinand VI had founded it in 1755 far away, beside the Manzanares. It was Charles III who in 1774 ordered it brought to the Paseo del Prado, as part of a larger Enlightenment plan that gathered three institutions of knowledge along that flank: the Botanical Garden, the Royal Observatory, and the Natural History Cabinet that Juan de Villanueva designed in 1785 and that everyone now knows as the Prado Museum. The garden opened in 1781, laid out on three stepped terraces. Sabatini signed the first design, but it was Villanueva who directed the work finally carried out. One detail recalling the king survives. The Puerta Real, Sabatini’s work, keeps a Latin inscription proclaiming Charles III restorer of botany for the health and enjoyment of the citizens, dated 1781. That main entrance later gave up its role to the Puerta de Murillo and has stayed shut ever since. On the highest terrace, an oval pond holds a fountain crowned by a bronze bust of Linnaeus, the Swedish naturalist who ordered the plant world into species.