Isabel II Hall Park

Although it was originally a walking and recreation area located on the outskirts of the city, today it is probably its most popular and busy green corner. Throughout the entire Elizabethan period, the Gardens of the Salon were defined on the grounds of the vegetable gardens of the extinct convent of Carmen, demolished during the first months of 1837 after the works of fortification and defense of the city against the Carlists. What was the convent and vegetable gardens of the Carmelite monks became, in the middle of the second half of the 19th century, a place of recreation for those new tastes of the flourishing bourgeoisie of Palencia. In 1844, when the queen came of age, the City Council decided to dedicate this public space to her, naming it Salon Isabel II. During the last third of the 19th century, the place became one of the essential landscapes in the 19th-century city, as it represented a balanced synthesis of romantic aesthetics and a taste for those spaces where childhood games and relaxed conversations could coexist. The last changes that the Park underwent took place in the 20th century according to the project of the architect Carmen Espegel, who kept part of the classic drawing and part of its woodland, adding some more avant-garde style elements.