El Escorial, Spain

About 45 kilometres northwest of Madrid, where the plain gives way to the pine-covered slopes of the Sierra de Guadarrama, a single grey granite building houses a monastery, a royal palace, a basilica, a library and the tombs of the Spanish kings. El Escorial was Philip II’s answer to a battle, a vow and a dynasty in need of a burial place, and it remains the clearest statement in stone of how he saw his faith and his office. On Day 11 of our small group tour of Spain and Portugal, the group leaves Madrid for Salamanca and stops first at El Escorial to visit the Royal Monastery. It is worth arriving knowing what you are looking at, because the building rewards a reader far more than a passer-by.

A vow to St Lawrence and a pantheon for a dynasty

On 10 August 1557, the feast of St Lawrence, Spanish forces defeated the French at the Battle of St Quentin in northern France. Philip II, king of Spain since 1556, vowed to honour the saint on whose day the victory fell, and the monastery he founded is dedicated to him: its full name is the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Some accounts add that the building was meant to make amends for a church of St Lawrence destroyed during the fighting.

The vow was one part of the purpose. Philip’s father, the Emperor Charles V, died in 1558, and Philip wanted a fitting dynastic pantheon where his father and the Habsburg kings who followed could be buried together. He settled a community of Hieronymite monks in the new monastery, whose duty was to offer perpetual prayers for the souls of the royal family. In 1561 Philip also settled his court in Madrid, ending the old custom of a travelling court that had often been based in Toledo, the ancient imperial city.

Juan de Herrera and the granite of El Escorial

The first stone was laid on 23 April 1563. The original architect was Juan Bautista de Toledo, who drew up the plan of a vast rectangle enclosing a series of courtyards. When he died in 1567, the work passed to his former assistant, Juan de Herrera, who carried it through to completion in 1584, an astonishing pace for a building of this size. Herrera is usually given most of the credit for the design.

The building is made mainly of grey granite quarried locally, and the stone sets its character. Granite is hard to carve finely, and Herrera made a virtue of that, letting long unbroken walls, regular rows of windows and plain classical orders do the work that sculpture does elsewhere. The result gave its name to a style: herreriano, or Herrerian, an architecture of line, proportion and restraint rather than ornament. UNESCO inscribed the Monastery and Site of the Escurial on the World Heritage List in 1984, and the complex is now cared for by Patrimonio Nacional, which manages Spain’s royal sites.

Why is El Escorial said to be shaped like a gridiron?

Tradition holds that the plan, a great rectangle divided by internal ranges into courtyards, recalls the gridiron on which St Lawrence was roasted to death in Rome in the third century. It is a good story, and guides often tell it, but historians treat it with caution: the layout has also been read as a reworking of descriptions of the Temple of Solomon, and as the practical outcome of combining a monastery, a palace and a church in one building.

The basilica and the high altar

The basilica stands at the heart of the complex. Herrera changed Juan Bautista de Toledo’s Latin cross design to a Greek cross and replaced a planned half-dome with the full circular dome that now dominates the skyline. Inside, massive granite piers give the church a sober grandeur, with very little colour until the eye reaches the east end.

There the high altar rises in a three-tiered reredos of red granite and jasper, nearly 28 metres tall, set with gilded bronze statues by Leone Leoni and his son Pompeo. Herrera designed the tabernacle, which was made between 1579 and 1586 by Jacopo da Trezzo. After the austerity of the nave, the colour and gilding of the altar are deliberate: everything in the building leads towards this point, including, as you will see later, the king’s own bedroom.

The Royal Pantheon and the Pantheon of the Infantes

Beneath the basilica lies the Pantheon of the Kings, reached by a narrow marble staircase that leads down from beside the sacristy. Philip II did not live to see it built: it was begun under his son Philip III, to designs by the Italian architect Giovanni Battista Crescenzi, and work ran from 1617 to 1654, which is why its polished marble and gilded bronze feel so different from the granite above. Around the chamber, 26 marble sepulchres are set in tiers. Almost every Spanish monarch since Charles V lies here, with Philip V and Ferdinand VI the notable exceptions; kings rest on one side and their consorts on the other.

The Pantheon of the Infantes, completed in 1888, holds the royal princes and princesses who did not reign. Its most striking tomb belongs to Don Juan of Austria, Philip II’s half-brother and the commander at Lepanto, whose monument is grander than those of many kings. A single tomb for royal children who died young, with room for sixty, is one of the more affecting sights in the building.

The library and its frescoed vault

Philip II founded the Royal Library and stocked it as one of the great collections of Renaissance Europe. The main hall is a long, high gallery lined with carved wooden bookcases, but most visitors look up. The barrel vault is covered in frescoes by the Italian painter Pellegrino Tibaldi and his assistants, representing the seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy, the core of a classical education. The collection today runs to more than 40,000 books and manuscripts.

Philip II’s apartments

For a man who ruled a global empire, Philip lived plainly at El Escorial. His private rooms are small and simply furnished, and among the objects kept there is the chair that supported his gouty leg. He died in these rooms in 1598. The bedroom is set against the basilica, and a window allowed him to follow Mass at the high altar from his bed when illness kept him from rising.

The contrast with the 18th-century Royal Palace that the group visits in Madrid on Day 8 is instructive; our guide to the highlights of Madrid covers the capital where Philip settled his court.

How much walking and how many stairs are there at El Escorial?

Expect a good deal of standing and walking indoors, on stone floors, with stairs between levels. The Pantheon of the Kings is reached down a narrow marble staircase, so visitors who find steps difficult should mention it to the Program Leader beforehand. The tour as a whole is rated Level 2, Moderate: travellers need to be able to carry their own luggage, climb and descend stairs, and take part in three to five hours of physical activity a day, the equivalent of walking up to eight kilometres on uneven ground.

How long does the tour spend at El Escorial?

The tour itinerary does not set a fixed length for the stop: El Escorial is the first of two pauses on the travel day from Madrid to Salamanca. After the visit to the Royal Monastery, the group continues to Ávila to view the medieval walls and arrives at the hotel in Salamanca, with dinner that night at a local restaurant.

San Lorenzo de El Escorial: the town in the foothills

The monastery stands in the town of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, which grew up on the slopes of Monte Abantos. It began as El Escorial de Arriba, the upper part of the older village of El Escorial further down the hill. Its granite streets and houses share the colour of the monastery, and the pine forests and rocky ridges of the Sierra de Guadarrama rise directly above. In the 18th century the Bourbons added smaller retreats nearby, among them the Casita del Príncipe, begun in 1772 by order of Charles III and named for his son, the future Charles IV.

What should I wear for the visit to El Escorial?

Bring a warm layer and comfortable shoes with good grip. The town sits at a little over 1,000 metres on the mountainside, some 350 metres higher than central Madrid. The courtyards and the esplanade in front of the monastery are paved in granite, and the visit itself is spent largely on stone floors.

From El Escorial to Ávila and Salamanca

El Escorial opens one of the richest days of the journey. From the foothills, the group crosses into Castile and León for a pause beneath the walls of Ávila, where our guide to walking Ávila’s medieval walls explains the circuit of granite towers and gates. The day ends in the university city of Salamanca, and on Day 12 a local guide leads the group through the old and new cathedrals, the House of Shells and the University. To see how these days fit between Madrid and Portugal, read our day-by-day Spain and Portugal itinerary.

Travelling in a small group of up to 16 travellers leaves time for questions in a building that raises so many. To see El Escorial as part of a longer journey through Spain and on into Portugal, the Small Group Tour of Spain & Portugal takes mature travellers there with a Program Leader to set it in context.

Few buildings in Europe reveal their builder so plainly. Walk from the granite courtyards to the golden altar, down the marble stairs to the tombs and back up to the small room where Philip II watched Mass from his bed, and you have followed the thread of his reign from victory to death. It is a fine way to leave Madrid, and a fitting prelude to the honey-coloured stone of Salamanca waiting at the end of the day.