La Alameda's Castle

Madrid, Spain, Spain

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La Alameda's Castle, located in Madrid's Barajas district near the Alameda de Osuna neighborhood, is a 15th-century medieval fortress built between 1431 and 1476 by the Mendoza family, particularly Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, atop prehistoric Bronze Age and Roman settlements to symbolize their lordship over the villages of La Alameda and Barajas.

Featuring a rectangular layout with rounded corners, two towers (square and cylindrical), a moat, artillery barriers, and irregular limestone masonry, it later transformed into a luxurious Renaissance palace in 1575 with gardens, fountains, large windows, and a lake, hosting nobility like Queen Margaret of Austria in 1599 and the Duke of Alba.

Used as a Republican fort with machine-gun nests during the Spanish Civil War, it suffered a devastating fire in 1697 leading to abandonment and ruin, but recent consolidations since 1988 have turned it into an open-air museum under Madrid City Council's Department of Museums, showcasing millennia of layered history amid a public park.