Casa de Campo

This guide to Casa de Campo in Madrid starts with Philip II turning this stretch of countryside into his private hunting ground after moving the royal court to Madrid, buying up farms including the country house that gave the whole park its name. It follows the estate's opening to the public after the monarchy fell in 1931, and the fighting that swept through five years later when Nationalist troops advancing on Madrid seized its highest hill, Cerro de Garabitas, in November 1936. Republican brigades threw themselves at the hill again and again, in a fight that lasted the rest of the war.