Miguel Lasso de la Vega Zamora holds a PhD in architecture from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and was awarded a special doctorate prize. His doctoral thesis was published by the Madrid council and the Fundación Caja Madrid with the title Quintas de recreo. He is the director of the Fundación Arquitectura COAM (Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid), where he was previously in charge of the Servicio Histórico COAM and the Instituto Arquitectura, a senior lecturer in the History of Architecture at the Universidad Europea de Madrid and a numerary member of the Instituto de Estudios Madrileños. He has more than eighty publications to his name, including books, chapters and articles, mostly on Madrid’s architectural heritage. Notable among them are his studies on royal sites and aristocrats’ palaces.