Royal Botanic Garden of Madrid

The Real Jardín Botánico is a working research institute of the CSIC, Spain's national research council, that happens to be open to the public. Fernando VI ordered its creation on 17 October 1755, on a site called the Huerta de Migas Calientes beside the Manzanares, stocked with more than 2000 plants that the botanist and surgeon José Quer had gathered on his travels through the Iberian peninsula. From 1774 Carlos III gave instructions to move it to the Paseo del Prado, where it opened in 1781; Sabatini, the king's architect, and Juan de Villanueva, who built the Prado museum next door, took charge of the project.

The collection is spread over three terraces that step down towards the Paseo del Prado, and the walk between them is the shape of a visit. The rose garden occupies the four central squares of the lowest terrace, next to the Puerta del Rey, and holds 296 specimens arranged in the ten sections of the genus Rosa, from wild species and old garden roses through to varieties that mattered in the history of rose breeding. The tree collection runs to nearly 1500 specimens. There is a bonsai collection of more than a hundred trees and shrubs on its own terrace, and an olive collection that includes the individual tree used for the first complete sequencing of the olive genome.

The garden publishes no suggested visit length, so ninety minutes is this guide's own figure rather than the operator's. Eight hectares on three terraces is a small site by botanical garden standards and a large one by central Madrid standards, and ninety minutes is what it takes to walk all three terraces without hurrying, spend ten minutes inside the Castroviejo greenhouse and read a reasonable number of labels. An hour is enough if the aim is the rose garden and the lower terrace only, which is the part nearest the Prado gate.

Open daily 10:00 with seasonal closing from 18:00 in winter to 21:00 in summer. Events, worship, maintenance and security measures can alter ordinary access. The garden opens at 10. 00 every day of the year except 1 January and 25 December, and the closing time changes with the month: 18. 00 in January and February, 19. 00 in March, 20. 00 in April, 21. 00 from May to August, 20. 00 in September, 19. 00 in October and 18. 00 in November and December. The practical consequence is that a winter afternoon here is short. In January the whole visitable day is eight hours long and the last useful entry is 17.

Adult admission is EUR 4; selected reduced and free categories apply. Special tours, exhibitions and activities use separate tickets. General admission is 4 euros per person. The reduced rate of 1 euro covers students aged 18 to 25, adults in large families and visitors over 65, all on production of proof, and groups of ten or more pay 2 euros each. Entry is free for under-18s, accredited teachers, CSIC staff, members of the Friends of the garden, ICOM members, accredited press, unemployed visitors with a certificate, disabled visitors as defined by Spanish law and, where the visit requires one, their companion; the proof has to be shown at the box office. Free entry also runs on Tuesdays from 10.

Estación del Arte Metro and Atocha rail station. This is the named public-transport reference for an independent arrival. The garden stands at Plaza de Murillo 2, immediately south of the Prado museum and a short walk from the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen. Visitors enter only by the Puerta de Murillo, the gate facing the Prado; the door on Calle de Claudio Moyano belongs to the research building and is for staff and visiting researchers, so do not queue there.

Step-free public approaches, lifts where required, and accessible toilets serve principal visitor areas. The access description applies to principal visitor areas rather than every historic or operational space. The garden asks to be treated as a museum of living things rather than as a park, and the house rules are stricter than a visitor expects of green space. Picnics are not allowed anywhere in the grounds and food must be kept to the cafe area; smoking is prohibited; walking is confined to the paths, with the beds and planted areas out of bounds; nothing may be picked from any plant; the animals, including the cats and ducks, are not to be fed.

Informal photography is allowed throughout the garden, on the condition that it does not damage the plants or block the paths for staff and other visitors. Inside the greenhouses photographs are permitted but tripods and any other support or base are not, so the Castroviejo house has to be shot hand-held, which in practice means a fast lens or a raised sensitivity in the darker corners under the canopy. Exhibitions in the Villanueva Pavilion may not be photographed at all.