The area of Casa de Campo has been populated since ancient times and there is profuse evidence of the presence of man. At the end of the 4th Century some noble families obtained land on the right bank of the river Manzanares, one family being the Vargases whose villa included the present Casa de Campo. Actually one of the families constructed a field house (casa de campo), from which the name of the park is derived. Until 1931, it was exclusively a hunting ground and leisure area for royalty and one can see the gate through which the kings rode out of the palace grounds. Many additional constructions, such as bridges, walls and churches, which today are only ruins, were installed to modernise the area over the course of time. In the 19th Century, under the rule of the Bourbons, the existence of the park was endangered because the construction of a new town was intended on its location but luckily (for the green area) the project failed. At the end of the 19th Century, a great fire devastated a great part of the enclosure. By the 20th Century, the vast enclosure of Casa de Campo was organised as its own town, with economic relations with its neighbours and was ruled by a mayor.

Casa de Campo continued being a closed park exclusively for royalty until the restoration of the Second Republic. On May 1, 1931, about 300,000 Madrid citizens went to the park to celebrate its opening to the public and entered the walled town for the first time. On June 3, a decree declared Casa de Campo a historical-artistic monument of national character. Nevertheless, it wasn’t included in the registers of property as green space for public use until 1963. During the Civil War of 1936-1939, a large part of the free green public area served as a battle field where trenches and artillery were situated. The park did not reopen for visitors until the end of World War II. Major restoration works took place in order to reinstate the former glory of the park and a part of these works was the inauguration of Feria del Campo (Fair of the Field), which is a series of buildings representing different regions of the country.

The further development of the huge park Casa de Campo not only included an enlargement of its territory to the neighbouring municipalities of Madrid, but also many new attractions were created on the spot, which brings numerous visitors to the park each year. The two most famous installations added to the Casa de Campo are the Parque de Atracciones (The Amusement Park) in 1969 and the zoo in 1972. Moreover, there are many other interesting places on the park’s premises such as the Venta del Batan, where bull fights were held and where the bull-fighters were trained. Among the other major attractions are its large area of pleasant greenness, peace and seclusion from high-speed roads inside the park (all were prohibited in the 1980s), the presence of fauna all around and its marvelous artificial lake where one can even hire a boat. Casa de Campo is not a park to be missed if one has some free time and wants to spend it in a delightful way.