The Spanish palace that burned for royal art: A hidden gem located in

The Torre de la Parada was a former hunting lodge built by Luis de Vega in 1547-1549. It was located in Monte de El Pardo in Fuencarral-El Pardo, near the Royal Palace of El Pardo, some way outside Madrid in the Sierra de Guadarrama. In the 17th century, King Philip IV of Spain undertook a major renovation, hiring the architect Juan Gomez de Mora for the job. This transformed the lodge into a celebration of the arts, with leading painters such as Rubens and Velázquez contributing to the decoration, and Rubens was commissioned to produce sixty mythological paintings. Forty of those paintings still survive, many of which are now in the Prado Museum in Madrid. The current location of the paintings by Paul de Vos is not certain, according to the sources. The Torre de la Parada was mostly destroyed by fire in 1714 during the War of Spanish Succession, leaving only the ruins.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons