Madrid is already part of the World Heritage list. In 2019, Spain submitted to UNESCO the candidacy of the Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro, Landscape of Arts and Sciences, to be part of the World Heritage List and its proposal has been favorably resolved in 2021. And it is that This area constitutes an extraordinary urban landscape where culture and nature have been united since the mid-16th century until today, which gives it the rank of Outstanding Universal Value.
The UNESCO World Heritage List lists sites that are of Outstanding Universal Value. This list was created in 1972 by the World Cultural and Natural Heritage Convention with the purpose of protecting the heritage considered of importance for all humanity worthy of being preserved for present and future generations.
The Madrid City Council, in collaboration with the Community of Madrid and the support of the Ministry of Culture, has promoted Madrid's candidacy to form part of the UNESCO World Heritage list.
The candidacy includes the Paseo del Prado and the Parque del Retiro, with their corresponding surroundings, and is presented as a proposal to form part of this list as a Cultural Landscape, a landscape modeled by man throughout history with a value exceptional:
It constitutes the first tree-lined promenade within a European capital, created in the 16th century to offer the inhabitants of Madrid a space that encourages leisure and rest in a wooded environment.
It is also a model of urban intervention that combines nature and science as the engine of transformation of society. At the time of the Enlightenment, that same spatial area constituted an exceptional urban landmark, thanks to the arrangement of the Paseo del Prado as the headquarters of a series of institutions (Cabinet of Natural History, Royal Botanical Garden and Royal Observatory of Madrid) to promote the scientific research and spread that knowledge throughout society. This model spread through most of the cities of Spain and all of Latin America.