Supervised by Alberto Sanz Hernando, Lucía Gamboa explores the private gardens of Madrid, analyzing how the city has been experienced through them in contrast to the prominence of public parks.

Madrid’s private gardens, from the 19th century to the present, are an essential though perhaps invisible part of the urban fabric. In contrast to the large public parks and royal estates, these gardens formed a network of domestic, discreet nature that structured ways of life, social aspirations, and the arrival of European influences in the city.

They allow us to read the cultural, urban, and symbolic transformations of Madrid. Their history is marked by tensions: tradition versus modernity, intimate versus public, imported models versus local adaptations. This hybrid condition makes the private garden an indicator of how the city was exploring new aesthetic sensibilities and new ways of inhabiting.

Lucía combines planimetric analysis, a review of European gardening treatises, and a comparative study of seven cases. This approach shows how, during the 19th century, Madrid adapted English and French references, implementing them in its dry climate, irregular parcel layout, and a socially transforming context. John Claudius Loudon disseminated the model of the functional, educational, and botanical suburban garden, present in many villas of the Ensanche. Meanwhile, Haussmannian Parisian urbanism brought ordered parterres, visual centrality, and a bourgeois ornamental repertoire to the city. The result is not a literal imitation but an Isabeline eclecticism with geometric symmetries, curved paths, greenhouses, exotic species, and cultivation areas.

The author identifies three main typologies: the regular garden, heir to conventual and Baroque models, with a clear axis, rectangular parterres, and formal control, the landscape garden, with curved lines and free composition, inspired by the English model, and the Isabeline eclectic garden, blending order and freedom, adapted to local conditions, dominant among Madrid’s 19th-century bourgeoisie.

By analyzing the Ibáñez de Ibero maps of 1879, the 1940 cadastral maps, and the current situation, Lucía documents the expansion, transformation, and progressive disappearance of these gardens. Around 1879, they were associated with large aristocratic estates and urban palaces. By 1940, their presence had been drastically reduced due to densification, speculation, and legislative changes. The Castro Ensanche Plan was modified until it no longer mandated the presence of private gardens. Later, the PGOUM protected public parks but not domestic gardens, leading to the loss of hundreds, while others survived in isolation due to heritage protection.

Examples include the scenic garden of the Palacio de Buenavista, the frontal order of the Palacio del Marqués de Salamanca, the garden of the Italian Embassy, the Isabeline hybridization at Palacio de Parcent, the garden of the Museo Lázaro Galiano, the interior courtyard of Serrano blocks, and the private garden at Castelló 43. These examples show how the relationship between architecture, layout, and vegetation created intimate spaces that contributed to the city’s quality.

This “green memory” persists, though fragmented, in inner blocks or rear lots. Lucía highlights the need to integrate it into contemporary urban policies. These gardens are part of the cultural heritage and constitute a structural component of Madrid’s landscape.