Royal Palace

Largest palace in Europe with over 3,500 rooms.  The audio guide tour was great.  Just enough history and background of each room without being over whelming.  We got there early ahead of many of the large tour groups that seem to completely take over each room that they enter, and are not paying attention to anyone else around them.  We got to enjoy each room without crowding.  

We started on the grand staircase that came up from the covered entry where the carriages could pull in.  

This is the inner court yard.  The staff offices are on the lowest level, the Royal apartments are on the 2nd level, the third and fourth levels are the serving quarters.  All of the Windows on the second level are on a high ceiling walk way with entrances to the rooms off of the walk way.  It is light and airy and quite attractive.

The Throne room.  Still used for state occasions.

Formal dining room, seats up to 130.  They had several display cases with different China and silver place settings.  One of the silver settings as 10 pieces each - must use the right fork!  There were also sets of liquor glasses that protocol requires for different beverages.

This was my favorite room (designed by Gasparini).  All of the decor had vines and flowers.  The marble inlays in the floor were especially gorgeous.  It was fun to see the matching fabric that is twined around each of the chains that hold the chandeliers in each room.

This room had blue velvet wall paper that was so tempting to touch!  

This was the ball room.

Professional photo of the entry hall with the carpets laid down for a special guest arrival. (Taken from a postcard)

I noticed that each window in the palace actually had Four layers.  The levered blinds, the white wooden framed Windows, the brown wooden framed Windows, and a solid wooden shutter.  That should provide good insulation in the winter!

We decided to picnic in the gardens (we had bought lunch at the Dia grocery store in the morning). This is a view of the palace from the gardens.  It took us a long time to get all the way around the city block to the gardens and the paths did not go through it as the map indicated.  We had to go all the way around and ended up exiting where we started.  A bit more walking than we planned.  You can tell from the height of the building that it was once a fortress.  It would be neat to see what all is in the levels below the main floor where we entered from the plaza above.

In the garden.

I was surprised that the gardens were not planted out yet.  These were all bedding plants waiting to go in.  The window boxes are also not very prominent right now.