CestLaJu

Having completed far more than I thought we could in the half-day we had in Madrid after arriving via plane, we decided to take a Day Trip to the site of El Escorial.

El Escorial was formerly the official residence of the King of Spain; it serves multiple functions. It has two primary architectural complexes, which serve the dual purposes of representing the power of the Spanish Monarchy, and illustrating the predominance of Roman Catholicism. Phillip II invested his inexhaustible stores of New World Gold to stem the growing protestant tide during the reformation. Failing to do this, he decided to enlist  Juan Bautista de Toledo as the collaborator on this complex in 1559. However, the building was not completed until 1584, and his apprentice, Juan de Herrera had already taken over due to Toledo’s death.

Since pictures where not allowed in the interior, a certain percentage of the following photographs are provided courtesy of Wikipedia. I will say, that this is irksome, as pictures themselves do not harm the heritage, flashes do!! I do understand that many tourists do not follow this rule stringently, and I believe this is why photograph capabilities were ruined for all of us. 😦

My favorite rooms are as follows (I swear I walked MILES through the interior of this great structure):

Basilica

Wikipedia: Hall of Battles

Wikipedia: Pantheon of Kings

Tomb of Infants

Wikipedia: Biblioteca

I’m obviously feeling really lazy today, so I will leave it to you to do the research this time. 😛