Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso - The Gardens

The Gardens

Extending over 1,500 acres (6.1 km2), the gardens around the palace are one of the best examples of 18th-century European garden design. The French designer from the official French royal offices of Robert de Cotte, René Carlier, used the natural slope from the mountains to the palace grounds both as an aid for visual perspective and as a source for sufficient head to make water shoot out of the twenty-six sculptural fountains that decorate the park. Of the elaborate "Baths of Diana", focus of several garden axes, the chronically depressed Philip remarked, "It has cost me three millions and amused me three minutes."

Sculptors arrived from Paris to execute designs on the site; they included René Frémin (1672–1744, at La Granja until 1738), to whom the execution of many vases and sculptures was attributed in 18th-century inventories, Jean Thierry, and others who are little more than names in archival references.

All of the fountains represent themes from classical mythology, including Greek deities, allegories and scenes from myths. They are cast in lead to prevent corrosion, and painted over to simulate bronze, a nobler material, or lacquered over white oxydised lead to imitate marble. A group of richly sculptural vases have been attributed to designs by the "dazzling maverick" Gilles-Marie Oppenord, which were probably forwarded through the offices of Robert de Cotte, overseeing French royal building projects as intendant des Bâtiments du Roi. Bruno Pons noted in the sculptural vases "an almost excessively brilliant style, quite distinct from French royal taste and showing an undeniably superior understanding of ornament".

The original waterworks and piping are still functional. They rely purely on gravity to project water up to the forty-meter height of the fountain jet of Perseus and Andromeda. An artificial lake, El Mar, "the Sea", lies secluded at the highest point of the park, and provides a reservoir and water pressure for the whole system.

Today, only a few fountains are active each day. Twice a year, on the feast days of San Fernando (Saint Ferdinand) and San Luis (Saint Louis), all twenty-six fountains are set to play, providing a memorable show.