40 Fun Facts About Aranjuez

A heritage steam train from Madrid to Aranjuez is named after which fruit, handed out to passengers during the ride?

Strawberries from Aranjuez's market gardens once rode to the capital on this line, which opened in 1851 as only the second railway on the Iberian Peninsula.

The Concierto de Aranjuez, inspired by the Spanish royal palace gardens, is a concerto for which solo instrument?

Guitar was an instrument its composer never played: he was a pianist, and this was the first work he wrote for it with an orchestra.

Which exotic animals roamed the royal estate at Aranjuez from the 1580s, grazing freely and working as beasts of burden?

Dromedaries, about ten in 1583, had multiplied to some 200 by the 18th century and even survived an enemy army's occupation of the palace in 1710.

Which jazz trumpeter reworked the slow movement of the Concierto de Aranjuez for his 1960 album Sketches of Spain?

Miles Davis's version came out without the composer's permission; he was irate at first, then accepted that jazz had carried his concerto to a far wider public.

Which Spanish composer, blind since childhood, wrote the Concierto de Aranjuez and is buried in the town's cemetery?

Joaquín Rodrigo lost his sight to diphtheria at three and wrote his music in Braille; in 1991 the king made him Marquess of the Gardens of Aranjuez.

Aranjuez stands on the left bank of which river, the longest in the Iberian Peninsula?

Tagus water runs about 1,000 km from eastern Spain to the Atlantic at Lisbon, and at Aranjuez it was channelled into the canals and market gardens of the royal estate.

A games room in Aranjuez's royal palace, finished in 1765, has walls and ceiling lined entirely with which material?

Porcelain plaques from Madrid's Buen Retiro factory are screwed to wooden walls and moulded with Chinese-style figures, monkeys, parrots and dragons.

A popular myth says the mournful adagio of the Concierto de Aranjuez laments the 1937 bombing of which Basque town?

Guernica has nothing to do with it: the composer's wife wrote that the movement recalls the happy days of their honeymoon and his grief at the loss of their first pregnancy.

Until a king relaxed the rule in 1752, which people alone were allowed to live in the town of Aranjuez?

Royalty and nobility had the place to themselves, along with their palace servants; ordinary visitors had to find a bed in nearby towns such as Ocaña.

Which Spanish king, builder of the monastery of El Escorial, declared Aranjuez a Royal Site in 1560?

Philip II hired the same two architects for both projects, and set aside the fertile land north of the river for kitchen gardens and farming.

Which royal favourite, titled Prince of the Peace, was seized by a mob in the 1808 Mutiny of Aranjuez?

Manuel Godoy, a former royal guardsman who rose to run Spain, was found hiding in an attic; his fall is re-enacted in the town's streets every year.

Which prince became king of Spain when the 1808 Mutiny of Aranjuez forced his father to abdicate?

Ferdinand VII held the crown for only weeks: Napoleon lured father and son to Bayonne, made both renounce it and gave Spain to his own brother.

The Arab Room made for a 19th-century queen in Aranjuez's royal palace copies a hall of which Andalusian monument?

The Alhambra's Hall of the Two Sisters was the model for its brightly coloured plasterwork; the room served mainly as a smoking room for men.

The 1801 Treaty of Aranjuez confirmed Spain's return of which vast North American territory to Napoleon's France?

Louisiana was traded for a new Italian kingdom for the Spanish king's son-in-law; two years later Napoleon sold the territory to the United States.

In the 1779 Treaty of Aranjuez, France secretly agreed to fight Britain until Spain recovered which territory?

Gibraltar never fell, despite a siege of more than three years; the secret clause tied American independence to it without Congress knowing.

A 1777 treaty signed at Aranjuez fixed the border between French and Spanish colonies on which Caribbean island?

Hispaniola is still divided partly along that line: the northern and southern ends of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic follow the 1777 boundary.

The Spanish king toppled at Aranjuez in 1808 filled the royal palace there with his prized collection of which objects?

Clocks of every size stand in almost every hall, because the king was a keen amateur clockmaker as well as a collector.

Aranjuez's Mariblanca fountain shows which Roman goddess rising from the water with a dolphin at her feet?

Venus took the place of a king's statue in the early 1760s; her nickname is said to come from her likeness to the Mariblanca statue in Madrid.

One old theory traces the name Aranjuez to a Latin phrase meaning the altar of which Roman god?

Jupiter's altar, Ara Jovis in Latin, was a Benedictine scholar's idea; the theory most widely accepted instead points to a Basque word for hawthorn.

The Concierto de Aranjuez was written in 1939 not in Spain but in which foreign capital, where its composer had studied?

Paris was where he had trained under the composer Paul Dukas; he wrote the concerto there as the Spanish Civil War was ending and a wider war loomed.

Which Spanish city heard the world premiere of the Concierto de Aranjuez in 1940, a month before Madrid did?

Barcelona's Palau de la Música Catalana staged it on 9 November 1940, with Regino Sainz de la Maza, to whom the concerto is dedicated, as soloist.

Which flamenco star, who could barely read music, learned the Concierto de Aranjuez in 1991 and delighted its composer?

Paco de Lucía put rhythmic accuracy ahead of the polished tone classical players prize, and the composer declared that nobody had played the piece so brilliantly.

In which 1996 British film about a colliery band do the players nickname the Concierto de Aranjuez 'Orange Juice'?

Brassed Off features the adagio arranged for flugelhorn and band, recorded by the real Grimethorpe Colliery Band, whose own pit-closure story inspired the plot.

Which jazz pianist opens his much-played composition Spain with the adagio theme of the Concierto de Aranjuez?

Chick Corea used the melody as a slow introduction before his own tune takes off, and singer Al Jarreau kept the same opening in his vocal version.

Which woodwind instrument introduces the slow melody of the Concierto de Aranjuez over soft chords from the soloist?

Cor anglais, the oboe's deeper cousin, sings the tune first; the composer called the whole movement a dialogue between the soloist and solo wind instruments.

Which German director turned Peter Handke's play The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez into a film that competed at Venice?

Wim Wenders set it not in Spain but in a summer garden in France, where a man and a woman simply sit and converse all day; Handke himself plays the gardener.

Which German playwright set the opening act of his tragedy Don Carlos in the royal gardens of Aranjuez?

Friedrich Schiller set the play at the court of the king who founded royal Aranjuez, and Verdi later turned it into his opera Don Carlos.

Which queen of Spain opened the Madrid–Aranjuez railway in 1851, having given some of her own land for its terminus?

Isabella II presided over an opening party for more than a thousand guests, paid for entirely by the line's promoter, the Marquis of Salamanca.

Aranjuez's ornate railway station of the 1920s, decorated with mosaics, was built in which revival style?

Neo-Mudéjar brick and tile revive the Moorish-influenced craft of medieval Spain; in the main hall, mosaics spell out MZA, the initials of the railway company that built it.

Which celebrated Italian castrato directed the operas and firework spectacles of the Spanish court at Aranjuez?

Farinelli once lit a show with 60,000 candles, and the king had a house at Aranjuez enlarged to serve as the singer's own residence.

The Museo de Falúas, a 1960s building in Aranjuez's Jardín del Príncipe, displays which kind of royal transport?

Pleasure barges, richly carved and gilded, carried Spain's monarchs along the river beside the gardens; the museum stands next to the old royal jetty.

Which tributary, scene of a major 1937 Spanish Civil War battle, joins Aranjuez's main river just below the town?

Jarama saw Franco's forces cross the river in 1937 in an attempt to cut the road from Madrid to Valencia; the 15th International Brigade was among the defenders.

Which architect, famed for finishing El Escorial, also worked on the first royal palace at Aranjuez for the same king?

Juan de Herrera began his architectural career at Aranjuez in 1561; his sober, unadorned manner shaped Spanish building for a century as the Herrerian style.

Which medieval knightly brotherhood kept Aranjuez as a hunting reserve long before the Spanish Crown took it over?

Order of Santiago masters built a hunting lodge where the palace now stands; the estate passed to the Crown once Spain's monarchs took over the order's leadership.

The marble floors of Aranjuez's Casa del Labrador incorporate ancient Roman mosaics found in which Spanish city?

Mérida's mosaics were laid into a pavilion that began as a plain mock farmhouse and was then rebuilt as a lavish neoclassical retreat for the king's amusement.

In June 1784 the Spanish court gathered in the gardens of Aranjuez to watch a demonstration of which new invention?

Hot-air balloon flights were the sensation of the age: a Frenchman's balloon rose over Aranjuez less than seven months after the first manned flight in France.

Which spring vegetable, brought from the Low Countries in the 1700s, is a prized crop of Aranjuez's market gardens?

Asparagus travelled to the capital's markets by rail with the town's famous fruit; local cooking also leans on pheasant, a legacy of the royal hunts.

UNESCO listed Aranjuez as World Heritage in 2001 as which kind of site, shaped jointly by rivers, gardens and planners?

Cultural landscape status covers far more than the palace: the listing takes in riverside woods, tree-lined avenues, orchards, waterworks and the planned 18th-century town.

Which body, formed to lead Spain's fight against Napoleon, was constituted in Aranjuez's palace chapel in 1808?

Supreme Central Junta members met before an archbishop in the palace chapel, six months after the mutiny in the same town had brought down a king.

For the Spanish virtuoso Nicanor Zabaleta, the Concierto de Aranjuez was transcribed in 1974 for which solo instrument?

Harp and orchestra was the composer's own reworking, made 35 years after the original; he also turned the adagio into a song, Aranjuez, ma pensée.