El West Park, is reputed to be the oldest public park in Madrid. It was created on land of the old Royal Site of Florida, one more, of the properties that the Crown owned around Madrid. It was expropriated in 1868 and later transferred to the City Council. The park was born at the end of the XNUMXth century, at one end of the bourgeois expansion to beautify and oxygenate the new Madrid and as a place of public recreation, framed in a current of Hygienist Ideology that promoted this type of projects, opening public spaces, for the enjoy a working class, who lived in very poor housing.

It is located on a steep slope above the Manzanares River and responds to the style of the English garden, with a landscape character. It stands out for its steep slopes, winding roads, meadows, predominance of conifers, with some large specimens and magnificent views over the Sierra de Guadarrama. At the end of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th century, numerous rustic, historicist and eclectic elements and monuments in line with the reformism of the Restoration, some of which have been preserved to this day.

During the II Republic Many new features were introduced, but the Civil War full impact on the park. The fighting devastated the vegetation, destroyed the monuments and altered the topography. The entrenched front in the University City produced a definitive fracture and led to the construction of bunkers that still stand today.

The subsequent reconstruction of Cecilio Rodriguez (an old acquaintance for readers of 365 days in Madrid) respected the park's landscape style, but also introduced many modifications. The Parque del Oeste grew and between the 50s and 60s it became populated with monuments.

New spaces were born, such as Rose garden, the landscaped slopes of Paseo de Rosales or the Tinaja Park. An ideal place to rest, read or Bicycling. So close to the center and at the same time big enough to miss the hustle and bustle of the big city.

A abrazo.