Barges

Enjoy this collection at the Royal Barge Museum in Aranjuez

This collection of faluas, or recreational river barges, is remarkably important both for the quality of its pieces and for the consistency and uniqueness of the collection as a whole. It is currently on display at the Royal Barge Museum of Aranjuez, in a building raised in 1963-1964 in the Prince's Garden, near the Royal Dock and its pavilions. The collection has been used as a museum since the end of the 19th century, when it was opened to the public in the old Casa de Marinos on the right bank of the River Tagus.

The collection is made up of forty objects, six of which are boats and the rest of which are masts, models and other elements related to the nautical interests of the kings of Spain. This monographic museum functions as an informative space that recalls courtly pastimes on the rivers and ponds of the Royal Sites of Buen Retiro in Madrid, La Granja de San Ildefonso and, above all, Aranjuez. It was here that Ferdinand VI commissioned the stage designer Farinelli to build the Tagus Squadron, and where Charles IV, as Prince of Asturias, had a flotilla the manoeuvres of which he sometimes directed personally. In 1789, when he was already a monarch, he ordered the transfer of some frigates to the Sea of Ontígola, two kilometres from Aranjuez, so that he could sail in the calm waters of that artificial lagoon formed in the times of Philip II.

The oldest and most spectacular of the boats is the golden gondola commissioned in Naples by Charles II in 1683 for use on the lake of the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid. In 1724 it was moved to La Granja de San Ildefonso by order of Luis I and in 1966 it was added to the new Royal Barge Museum in Aranjuez. Chronologically, it is followed by the barge built for Carlos IV in Cartagena at the beginning of the 19th century, and decorated with heraldic motifs. The reign of Fernando VII saw the building of the barge with intertwined dolphins on the bow and the royal shield laureate on the stern, as well as the pavilion adorned with butterflies and garlands. Although it was used in the 1830s by Maria Cristina of Bourbon, the fourth and last wife of Ferdinand VII, this small boat had been built for his second wife, Maria Isabel of Braganza.

The canoe made of mahogany wood with gilded bronze reinforcements, built in Ferrol in 1859, dates from the reign of Isabella II. It was used by her son Alfonso XII at the "REAL CASA DE CAMPO/AÑO 1881", as the bronze plate on the stern indicates. The reign of Isabella II also produced the coaster, the work of José Tuduri de la Torre, dedicated by "MAHON TO HIS QUEEN", which has the city's coat of arms on the stern. Rowed by fourteen oars, the pavilion is adorned with yellow damask, as is the padded seat, the back of which is crowned by the Two Worlds symbol with the Pillars of Hercules and the Plus Ultra, under a royal crown. Alfonso XII's barge is also on display, a gift from the city of Ferrol in 1879. At eleven metres long and with fourteen oars, it was used by the monarch during his summer stays in San Sebastian.