What You Actually See on the Retiro Park Segway Loop

An hour on a segway covers ground a walking tour needs half a day to reach — which is the whole point of doing Retiro Park on two wheels. But the ride is only worth it if you know what you’re gliding past. Here’s the story behind each of the monuments on the loop, so the stops mean something.

Retiro was a royal garden first — the private grounds of the 17th-century Buen Retiro Palace, where the kings of Spain went to escape the city. It only opened to the public in the 19th century. That history is why the “park” is full of palaces, colonnades and monuments to dead kings, rather than just lawns.

Retiro Park coverage map: a half-day walk covers only part of the park in 35-40C summer heat, while the one-hour segway loop reaches the full monument circuit — Retiro is a former royal garden, not a compact city park — an hour on a segway reaches the full loop a walker only half-covers.

The Crystal Palace (Palacio de Cristal)

The showpiece of the park, and usually the photo everyone wants. It’s a glass-and-iron pavilion in the shape of a Greek cross, designed by Ricardo Velázquez Bosco and built in 1887 — not as a folly, but as a working greenhouse for an exhibition about the Philippines, then a Spanish colony. It was meant to house exotic tropical plants brought back from the islands.

Today it’s empty most of the time, used for contemporary-art installations by the Reina Sofía museum, and the emptiness is the appeal: light pours through the glass onto the water of the little lake in front of it.

The Palacio de Cristal in Retiro Park, a glass-and-iron greenhouse designed by Ricardo Velazquez Bosco and built in 1887 for an exhibition about the Philippines — Built in 1887 as a greenhouse for a Philippines exhibition; now an empty, light-filled art space.

The Fountain of the Fallen Angel (Fuente del Ángel Caído)

This is the one that surprises people. It is, as far as anyone can tell, one of the only public monuments in the world dedicated to Lucifer — the Devil himself, mid-fall, cast out of Heaven.

The sculpture is by Ricardo Bellver, cast in bronze for the 1878 Paris World’s Fair, and it depicts the exact moment from Milton’s Paradise Lost when the rebel angel is thrown down. It was set here in Retiro in the 1880s.

And then there’s the altitude. The fountain sits at an elevation that’s popularly given as exactly 666 metres above sea level — the biblical number of the beast. It’s a wonderful story and your guide will tell it with relish. It’s also almost true: the surveyed height is 665.4 metres. Close enough that nobody wants to spoil it.

The Fountain of the Fallen Angel in Retiro Park, sculpted by Ricardo Bellver depicting Lucifer's fall from Milton's Paradise Lost, at a surveyed elevation of 665.4 metres (popularly 666) — One of the only public monuments to Lucifer — at almost, but not quite, 666 metres.

The Monument to Alfonso XII and the Estanque

The grand one. At the north end of the park’s large boating lake — El Estanque — stands a semicircular colonnade rising over a bronze equestrian statue of King Alfonso XII, reflected in the water. It’s the postcard shot of Retiro, and on a segway you reach it without the long walk that puts most visitors off.

You can rent a rowing boat on the Estanque below it. From the water, the colonnade looks like something built for a much larger empire than Spain had left by the time it went up.

The Monument to Alfonso XII in Retiro Park: a grand semicircular colonnade over a bronze equestrian king, reflected in the Estanque boating lake — The postcard shot of Retiro — reached on the segway loop without the long walk that deters most visitors.

The Rosaleda and the Velázquez Palace

Two more stops the loop usually includes and a walking tour usually skips:

La Rosaleda, the rose garden, laid out in 1915 — spectacular in May, quiet the rest of the year, and the setting for several of the park’s sculptures.
The Velázquez Palace, a brick-and-tile exhibition hall by the same architect as the Crystal Palace, built a couple of years earlier for a mining exhibition.

Neither is a headline sight on its own. Together they’re the reason the segway loop feels complete and the walking half-day feels like it stopped early.

Why the segway reaches all of it

A guided walking tour of Madrid is a fine way to see the historic centre — Plaza Mayor, the Royal Palace, Habsburg Madrid. But it isn’t a Retiro tour, and on foot Retiro is genuinely big: the monument loop is several kilometres, in what is often 35–40°C summer heat. Most walkers get through half of it.

The segway does the full circuit in an hour, seated, with a live guide filling in exactly the kind of history above. That’s the trade the comparison table lays out against the walking tour and the hop-on-hop-off bus — the bus doesn’t even stop in the park.

Before you ride

The Devil’s fountain is the one to photograph. Southeast corner of the park; ask your guide to pause there.
The Crystal Palace is free to enter if you come back on foot afterwards — the segway loop passes it but doesn’t go in.
Mornings are cooler and emptier. Retiro fills up by midday, especially on weekends.
It’s a former royal garden, not a city park. The monuments are the point — a ride that names them beats one that just circles them.

Historical details verified against esMadrid (Madrid’s official tourism office), the Museo Reina Sofía, and Wikipedia, July 2026. The 666-metre figure is the popular version; the surveyed elevation is 665.4 metres.