Marcus Hurley
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The sat nav took us on quite a convoluted route through the town of El Escorial, probably because most streets were one way, and the car park had one of the most awkward entrances I have everseen. It would have pleased any castle designer with an S shaped entrance route and concrete columns either side, we drove VERY carefully through that to park!
We hadn't booked tickets but luckily there was almost no queue so we bought our tickets (€9? each) and followed the route through the rooms. The palace, built by Philip II in the sixteenth century, was a combined monastery and Royal Palace, being minimally altered through the last 500 years. It is so huge that it would not be sensible to let people wander so there is a precise route with ticket checks at several of the building entrances as you progress through. The scale of this palace is mind blowing, far larger than any stately home or Versailles for example. The courtyards otside the buildings were the width of a football pitch and there was no shade from the baking midday sun! As it was a Saturday it was reasonably busy but it absorbed the people easily.
First stop was the library, a fantastically decorated room with shelves of books (all put in spine first which seemed strange) and various globes interspersed with desks down the central aisle. The next room was the basillica, another larger than life room with a magnificent altar and domed ceiling. There were a large group of pilgrims inside so we didn't stay long. The first floor was blocked to visitors but we were able to see a magnificent painted ceiling above one of the staircases before another set of rooms with amazing ceilings and lots of artwork and then it was below ground to see the crypts. Spanish royalty have been buried in these tombs from the 16th century and although the tombs were uniform and rather austere, certainly compared to the Austrian Hapsburg tombs in the Kaisergruft, there was a definite majesty and permanence to them.
One of the most famous rooms in the complex is the Hall of Battles and this was the next stop on our tour. It lived up to it's reputation with an immense hall with the walls adorned with huge paintings of various battles and campaigns. The main one seemed to be the Spanish fighting the Grenadines and the accuracy and detail was quite phenomenal. There were various other smaller paintings too showing battles against the French and Dutch, a very interesting part of the tour, for me anyway!
After the Hall of Battles there were various state rooms, furnished as they would have been a few hundred years ago. The were adorned with massive and intricate tapestries, mostly woven in Spain after the loss of the Spanish Netherlands and their weaving schools. I must admit these rooms interested me very little so I skimmed through them.
Our final stop, once we found them, were the gardens. These were immense, but frankly rather dull. Rather like the palace itself, where there was no ornamentation or architectural decoration and it was really rather austere. They were very formal and almost entirely consisted of box hedges with the occasional small orange tree. The wall bordering the gardens was planted with rose bushes which were in a beautiful and uniform pink colour and obviously well manicured. There was a small area outside the complex where you could look over a pool and get reflections of the palace so I walked there while Deb and Mum sheltered from the sun. It was really rather hot and there was no shade in the gardens so they were probably quite sensible! There were a couple of gift shops in the complex but no cafes at all, it is a strange thing that the National Trust would probably have had a huge cafe with a terrace and do a roaring trade but no Spanish attractions seem to do this.
