In your obligation visit to the Plaza de Oriente during your trip to Madrid, you will have the opportunity to see a monument with the most important statue of the city, that of the king Philip IV.
In the aforementioned Plaza de Oriente, looking towards him Royal Theatre, you find the equestrian statue of Philip IV on a large pedestal, which forms a monument which becomes the central axis of this Madrid square.
If you reach the Plaza de Oriente walking from the central area, through the Isabel II Square, in front of you you will find the aforementioned equestrian statue as an obligatory step towards the Royal Palace.
It is a location surrounded by gardens where visitors gather to take photos of the great statue, either with the background of the aforementioned palace or with that of the Royal Theatre.
Curiosities about the history of the equestrian statue of Philip IV
La equestrian statue of Philip IV was commissioned by this king in the seventeenth century, because he wanted to have a monument that was even more majestic than his father's, Philip III, whose statue you can currently see in the center of the Plaza Mayor of Madrid.
The statue of Philip IV it was built by the italian sculptor Pietro tacca from the box Philip IV on horseback, Painted by Diego Velázquez, which you can see in the Prado Museum.
La great artistic importance of this work is that it is about the first equestrian statue in which the horse supported itself only on its hind legs.
In order to build it, Pietro tacca had technical advice from himself Galileo Galilei, after which the back part of the statue was built solid and the front part hollow, with a total weight of nine tons.
During the following centuries, this type of equestrian statues, examples of which you can see in large European cities such as Vienna.
Finished being cast in bronze in workshops in Florence in the year 1606 , equestrian statue of Philip IV Its first location was the missing Palace of the Good Retreat, located next to what is now the Retiro park in Madrid.
After some change of location, in 1843 it was definitively located in the Plaza de Oriente.
El monumentIn addition to statue, consists of a large pedestal with some sculptures and two fountains.
Photos of the equestrian statue of Felipe IV
Here you have more photos of this statue whose construction in its day posed an original technical solution.
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