The Escorial

The Escorial

Phillip II built the Escorial to fulfill a vow he had made after a hermitage dedicated to St Lawrence was demolished during a Spanish victory over the French in 1557. Previously his father had made a wish on his deathbed for a church with a royal mausoleum to be built, and the Escorial (Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial) accomplished both desires.

The palace stands in the foothills of the Sierra Guadarrama, and its vast grey, granite walls and austere appearance began a vogue for an architectural style known as desornamentado, meaning unadorned. The bleak basilica and simple royal apartments belie the wealth of the Habsburg art collection, which is largely housed in other buildings on the site such as the library and the royal pantheon.

The highlights of the basilica are the sumptuous altar and, in the chapel, Benvenuto Cellini's astonishing crucifix. The library, with its barrel-vaulted ceiling decorated with Tibaldi's frescoes, contains 40,000 books and manuscripts and the museum houses works by Titian, Tintoretto and Bosch. An impressive fresco by Giordano stands above the main staircase of the Augustinian monastery. The royal pantheon is somewhat unnerving. A flight of stairs leads down to the octagonal room, passing the pudridero a room where royal corpses were left to decompose for several years before being placed in the gilt and marble coffins that line the walls of the mausoleum. You can get to the Escorial by train or bus from Madrid.