The Jerónimos neighbourhood: history, art and life in the heart of Madrid’s Landscape of Light
· 7 min. read · by Christie's International Real Estate Madrid
The Jerónimos neighbourhood is one of those corners of Madrid where every street gathers several eras at once. It grew out of a royal monastery, developed on the site of a vanished palace, and today forms part of the Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro landscape, known in Madrid as the Paisaje de la Luz and inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2021. Between the Paseo del Prado and the Retiro you will find a museum of world renown, an eighteenth-century botanic garden, the seat of the Royal Spanish Academy and a century-old book market. This is its history, and what it offers to see, do and enjoy today.
A royal monastery that gave the neighbourhood its name
It all began with the Hieronymite monks. In 1464 Henry IV founded the monastery of Santa María del Paso beside the Manzanares, but the site proved unhealthy, and in 1502 Isabella the Catholic granted the monks their present location, then known as the Prado de San Jerónimo. From there, at the gates of the town, the monastery became part of court life: it frequently housed the royal family and hosted the oath-taking ceremonies of heirs as Princes of Asturias, from Philip II in 1528 to Isabella II in 1833. Philip II also extended the adjoining Royal Quarters so that he could follow Mass from his own rooms, in the manner of El Escorial.
The church of San Jerónimo el Real, a National Monument since 1925, and the cloister survive from that complex. The monumental staircase on Calle Ruiz de Alarcón was built in 1906 for the wedding of Alfonso XIII and Victoria Eugenia.
The palace that vanished and the neighbourhood that took its place
In the 1630s Philip IV built the Buen Retiro Palace next to the monastery. The Hall of Realms was built between 1630 and 1635, and the king gave the complex its name by a decree of 1 December 1633. UNESCO describes it as the epicentre of Golden Age culture: plays by Calderón de la Barca and Lope de Vega were performed in its theatre.
The Napoleonic invasion of 1808 severely damaged the monastery and the palace, which was later demolished. Only the Casón del Buen Retiro and the Hall of Realms survived. Charles III had opened part of the gardens to the public in 1767 and, between 1868 and 1876, they passed to the City Council. In those same decades, the 1860s and 1870s, the residential neighbourhood we know today began to develop on the former palace site.
Art: the Prado, its cloister and the Casón del Buen Retiro
The Prado Museum began as a scientific project. In 1785 Charles III commissioned Juan de Villanueva to design a building for the Natural History Cabinet, and it was Ferdinand VII who opened it on 19 November 1819 as the Royal Museum of Painting. In 2025 it received 3,513,402 visitors, the first time it has exceeded 3.5 million, and 65.9% of them lived outside Spain.
Its 2007 extension, designed by Rafael Moneo, ties in with the history of the neighbourhood. The Jerónimos cloister, built around 1672 by Fray Lorenzo de San Nicolás, was dismantled and rebuilt stone by stone as part of the museum: it is the piece known as the Moneo Cube.
A few steps away stands the Casón del Buen Retiro, built in 1637 as the palace ballroom. The Prado incorporated it in 1971 to display its nineteenth-century painting, and between 1981 and 1992 it showed Picasso's Guernica, now in the Reina Sofía. The palace's other survivor, the Hall of Realms, which for years housed the Army Museum, is being rehabilitated by Norman Foster and Carlos Rubio to join the museum, with opening expected in 2027.
Science, letters and books: the Botanic Garden, the Academy and the Cuesta de Moyano
The Royal Botanic Garden, created by Ferdinand VI in 1755, was moved by order of Charles III to the Paseo del Prado and opened there in 1781, in a design by Francesco Sabatini and Juan de Villanueva. It covers eight hectares laid out on three terraces, holds more than 5,500 living plant species, and its herbarium preserves around one million specimens.
The Royal Spanish Academy has occupied the building on Calle Felipe IV, designed by Miguel Aguado de la Sierra, since 1894. It opened on 1 April of that year in the presence of the young Alfonso XIII, still a minor, and it has been an Asset of Cultural Interest since 1998.
And beside the Botanic Garden railings, the Cuesta de Moyano has kept its permanent book fair since 1925, with some thirty stalls. On 14 January 2026 the Community of Madrid declared it an Intangible Asset of Cultural Interest. It is open every day of the year.
The Retiro and its glass palaces
What remains of the Buen Retiro gardens covers 120 hectares and is the largest part of the Landscape of Light. The park has more than 15,000 trees, a monumental seventeenth-century pond and two nineteenth-century buildings conceived for exhibitions: the Velázquez Palace, from 1883, and the Crystal Palace, from 1887, built for the Philippines Exhibition. Both are the work of Ricardo Velázquez Bosco and today serve as exhibition halls linked to the Reina Sofía Museum.
In the Rose Garden stands the Fallen Angel fountain, by Ricardo Bellver, one of the few sculptures in the world devoted to Lucifer's fall. And every spring the park hosts the Madrid Book Fair.
A walk through the neighbourhood
All of the above fits into one long morning, from west to east:
- Royal Botanic Garden. The garden's three terraces, beside the Paseo del Prado, are the best starting point.
- Cuesta de Moyano. The book stalls link the Paseo del Prado with the Retiro.
- Church of San Jerónimo el Real. Its side chapels display Madrid Baroque paintings lent by the Prado, and in 2023 the tomb of Hans Khevenhüller, imperial ambassador in Madrid from 1572 to 1606, was recovered.
- The Retiro. From the Velázquez Palace to the Crystal Palace and the Fallen Angel fountain.
- Plaza de la Lealtad. The Ritz hotel, opened by Alfonso XIII on 2 October 1910 and the first steel-framed building in Spain, closes the walk.
Living in the Jerónimos: a protected neighbourhood
The neighbourhood, largely residential, preserves a rich variety of nineteenth and twentieth-century architecture, and UNESCO counts the layout of its tree-lined streets among its protected attributes. The ICOMOS technical evaluation notes that private owners focus conservation on facades, entrance halls and staircases, while the interiors of homes have often been renewed. It also notes that no new construction has been allowed in the Retiro since 2004, so the green setting of the neighbourhood endures.
The Retiro, Ibiza and Atocha stations connect it with the rest of the city, and the neighbouring Recoletos neighbourhoodshares with it the cultural axis of the Paseo del Prado.
At Christie's International Real Estate Madrid we accompany buyers who want to live between the Prado and the Retiro. If you are considering a property in the Jerónimos neighbourhood, our team will be delighted to guide you.