Royal Palace of Madrid

The Palacio Real in Madrid sits on the rocky spur once occupied by the Moorish Alcazar and the Habsburg palace, until that burned down completely one Christmas night in 1734. Philip V, the first Bourbon on the Spanish throne, commissioned the Turin court architect Filippo Juvarra to design a replacement; after Juvarra's death in 1736 Giovanni Battista Sacchetti and Francesco Sabatini completed a reduced version by 1764. With 135,000 square metres of floor space and 3,418 rooms it is the largest royal palace in active use in Europe, though the Spanish royal family actually lives in the smaller Zarzuela palace. The building is used for state functions and partly open to visitors: the throne room with Tiepolo's ceiling fresco, the porcelain cabinet made of Buen Retiro porcelain, the royal pharmacy and the world's only complete preserved Stradivari quintet. The geometric Plaza de Oriente in front holds Velazquez's equestrian statue of Philip IV.