Santander: The Magdalena Palace and Renzo Piano's Centro Botín

The Magdalena peninsula guards the entrance to the bay of Santander, and in 1909–1911 the town paid for a palace on it by public subscription as a summer residence for Alfonso XIII — at one point the building committee even bought a Christmas lottery ticket to cover the costs, and lost. The king and his family came every summer until the Second Republic; his stables of 1914 were built to look like a medieval English village. Juan de Borbón sold the palace to the city in 1977, and the 24.5-hectare peninsula is now a public park. On the waterfront by the old town, the Centro Botín, an arts centre by Renzo Piano and Luis Vidal, opened on 23 June 2017.