The gardens: La Morera and La Pajarera courtyards

Court life in the leave Age average included gardens as an essential space. The Palace of Olite had two types of gardens: those of great extension, which were located outside the palace, in the current orchard of the convent of San Francisco, and a series of more secluded areas located inside the walled palace enclosure. We have already mentioned the extraordinary case of the cloister or raised garden, located next to the New Tower. The Morera and Pajarera courtyards, located in front of the Golden Gallery (Great Tower) and the King's Retreat (to the west of the New Tower) are the result of the division of the old western garden of the palace into two spaces, carried out in one of the last construction phases of the reign of Charles III (as revealed by the fact that its masonry is not connected to the perimeter walls). The separation was achieved by building a thick wall to house a spiral staircase, which facilitated circulation in this part of the palace complex.

The documentation tells us about the plants grown in the gardens, sometimes exotic plants such as orange trees, as well as the arrangement of flowerbeds and "pradeles" carefully arranged by gardeners who came from far away (for example, Mace from Brittany). A complex system of pipes supplied the water, which was stored in the Torre del Aljibe, on the other side of the Torre Nueva.

It is surprising to learn that the king wanted to surround himself with admirable animals that populated the palace: a lion supplied by the king of Aragon, camels, ostriches, etc., which to a large extent showed the magnificence and the monarch's taste for the marvellous. The palace was also home to birds, which curiously enough were left at position by a French tapestry maker, Lucien Bertolomeu, whom the king had hired to make this type of textile work, so highly prized during the leave Age average.