The area as seen from north. The Palace is the mass under the dome of La Almudena, on the left.

The Royal Palace of Madrid stands on a platform 55 m higher than the Manzanares bank. I once heard that the initial plan submited by Filippo Juvara, the architect, was for a building with four main courts, but that it had to be reduced to just one as there was such a steep slope (contour lines were still in the distant future, so such projects were not necesarily easy when made from a distance.

The level difference between the Palace and the river is solved through garden platforms; a new project now being built, the Royal Collections Museum, just adapts to that gap. Just south of the platform on which the Palace and the Almudena Cathedral are is the Viaduct, an urban bridge which has been for years a choice spot for… suicide, taking advantage of the difference in level.

A 1 m interval contour map with a 100 m grid. The river area is not acurrate, as the source data was probably collected during a recent works period

Preliminary works for the Royal Collections Museum, as portrayed on http://www.edicioneslalibreria.es/la-historia-de-madrid-bajo-el-museo-de-colecciones-reales/

Current state of the Museum