Francesco Sabatini

He was appointed as Great Master of Royal Works, with the rank of lieutenant colonel at the Engineers Corps, simultaneously designated also as an honorary academician of the Academia Real de Bellas Artes de San Fernando.

Sabatini's works are all encompassed within the neoclassical tradition, but he was not inspired fundamentally by ancient Greece and Rome, but by Italian Renaissance architecture.

He was promoted to lieutenant general of the Engineers Corps, was granted the degree of Knight of the Order of Santiago, and had direct access to the innermost royal circle after his designation as gentilhombre de camara (Gentleman of the Royal Chamber).

The Sabatini Gardens (located in front of the north facade of the Royal Palace of Madrid, between the Bailén street and the hill of San Vicente) were not designed by him; they were created in the 1930s on the site formerly occupied by the stables constructed by Sabatini.

Furthermore, Sabatini was responsible for building the Arms Factory of Toledo, the headquarters for the Walloon Guards in Leganés (presently part of the Charles III University of Madrid), a convent in Valladolid (Santa Ana) and another one in Granada (Comendadoras of Santiago) and the well-known Chapel of the Immaculate in the Burgo de Osma Cathedral.