El Escorial
The Royal Site of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, also called Monasterio de El Escorial or simply El Escorial, is a historical residence of the king of Spain located in the town of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, up the valley from the town of El Escorial and about northwest of the Spanish capital Madrid. Built between 1563 and 1584 by order of King Philip II, El Escorial is the largest Renaissance building in the world. It is one of the Spanish royal sites and functions as a monastery, basilica, royal palace, pantheon, library, museum, university, school, and hospital.
El Escorial consists of two architectural complexes of great historical and cultural significance: the royal monastery itself and La Granjilla de La Fresneda, a royal hunting lodge and monastic retreat about away. These sites have a dual nature: during the 16th and 17th centuries, they were places in which the power of the Spanish monarchy and the ecclesiastical predominance of the Catholic religion in Spain found a common architectural manifestation. El Escorial was both a Spanish royal palace and a monastery. Established with a community of Hieronymite monks, it has become a monastery of the Order of Saint Augustine. It also contained a boarding school, now the Real Colegio de Alfonso XII, still in operation.
Philip II engaged the Spanish architect Juan Bautista de Toledo to be his collaborator in the building of the complex at El Escorial. Toledo had spent the greater part of his career in Rome, where he had worked on St. Peter's Basilica, and in Naples serving the king's viceroy, whose recommendation brought him to the king's attention. Philip appointed him architect-royal in 1559, and, together, they designed El Escorial as a monument to Spain's role as a center of the Christian world.
On 2 November 1984, UNESCO declared The Royal Seat of San Lorenzo of El Escorial a World Heritage Site. It is a popular tourist attraction, often visited by day-trippers from Madrid—more than 500,000 visitors come to El Escorial every year.
Conception and design
El Escorial is situated at the foot of Mount Abantos in the Sierra de Guadarrama. This austere location, hardly an obvious choice for the site of a royal palace, was chosen by King Philip II of Spain, and it was he who ordained the building of a grand edifice here to commemorate the 1557 Spanish victory at the Battle of St. Quentin in Picardy against King Henry II of France. King Phillip II's goal was to have a princely mansion in a wooded countryside, while also being architecturally different from most buildings that were being commissioned at the time. Phillip's decision to do this was inspired by his journeys in Europe exploring architecture, including the Ospedale Maggiore that inspired ideas for the design of the Escorial. One of Phillip II's personal aspirations was to be a monk and a monarch, and this would come to influence the design. The result of all these ideas was an imposing three story tall, orthogonal, stronghold-like structure with a dual function as both a royal residence and monastery. Philip also intended the complex to serve as a necropolis for the interment of the remains of his parents, Charles I and Isabella of Portugal, himself, and his descendants. In addition, Philip envisioned El Escorial as a center for studies in aid of the Counter-Reformation cause. The Escorial would come to be so iconic that the design of the building became a new architectural style of Spanish renaissance architecture, known as the Herrerian style.The building's cornerstone was laid on 23 April 1563. The design and construction were overseen by Juan Bautista de Toledo, who did not live to see the completion of the project. With Toledo's death in 1567, direction passed to his apprentice, Juan de Herrera, under whom the building was completed in 1584, in slightly less than 21 years. To this day, la obra de El Escorial is a proverbial expression for a thing that takes a long time to finish.
Since then, El Escorial has been the burial site for most of the Spanish kings of the last five centuries, Bourbons as well as Habsburgs. The Royal Pantheon contains the tombs of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Philip II, Philip III, Philip IV, Charles II, Louis I, Charles III, Charles IV, Ferdinand VII, Isabella II, Alfonso XII, and Alfonso XIII. Two Bourbon kings, Philip V and Ferdinand VI, as well as King Amadeus, are not buried in the monastery.
Image:Escorial traza def.jpg|thumb|left|El Escorial: floor plan, based on that of Solomon's Temple
The floor plan of the building is in the form of a gridiron. The traditional belief is that this design was chosen in honor of Saint Lawrence, who, in the third century AD, was martyred by being roasted to death on a grill. St. Lawrence's feast day is 10 August, the same date as the 1557 Battle of St. Quentin.
However, the origin of the building's layout is quite controversial. The grill-like shape, which did not fully emerge until Juan de Herrera eliminated from the original conception the six interior towers of the façade, was not unique to El Escorial. Other buildings had been constructed with churches or chapels fronting on interior courtyards: King's College, Cambridge, dating from 1441, is one such example; the old Ospedale Maggiore, Milan's first hospital, begun in 1456 by Antonio Filarete, is another grid-like building with interior courtyards. In fact, palaces of this approximate design were commonplace in the Byzantine and Arab world. Strikingly similar to El Escorial is the layout of the Alcázar of Seville and the design of the Alhambra at Granada, where, as at El Escorial, two courtyards in succession separate the main portal of the complex from a fully enclosed place of worship.
The most persuasive theory for the origin of the floor plan is that it is based on descriptions of the Temple of Solomon by the Judeo-Roman historian Flavius Josephus: a portico followed by a courtyard open to the sky, followed by a second portico and a second courtyard, all flanked by arcades and enclosed passageways, leading to the "holy of holies". Statues of David and Solomon on either side of the entrance to the basilica of El Escorial lend further weight to the theory that this is the true origin of the design. A more personal connection can be drawn between the David-warrior figure, representing Charles V, and his son, the stolid and solomonically prudent Philip II. Echoing the same theme, a fresco in the center of El Escorial's library, a reminder of Solomon's legendary wisdom, affirms Philip's preoccupation with the great Jewish king, his thoughtful and logical character, and his extraordinary, monumental temple.
The Temple of Solomon design, if indeed it was the basis for El Escorial, was extensively modified to accommodate the additional functions Philip II intended the building to serve. Besides being a monastery, El Escorial is also a pantheon, a basilica, a convent, a school, a library, and a royal palace. All these functional demands resulted in a doubling of the building's size from the time of its original conception.
Built primarily from locally quarried gray granite, square and sparsely ornamented, El Escorial is austere, even forbidding, in its outward appearance, seemingly more like a fortress than a monastery or palace. It takes the form of a gigantic quadrangle, approximately, which encloses a series of intersecting passageways and courtyards. At each of the four corners is a square tower surmounted by a spire, and, near the center of the complex, rise the pointed belfries and round dome of the basilica. Philip's instructions to Juan Bautista de Toledo were simple and clear, directing that the architects should produce "simplicity in the construction, severity in the whole, nobility without arrogance, majesty without ostentation."
Aside from its explicit purposes, the complex is also an enormous storehouse of art. In it are displayed masterworks by Titian, Tintoretto, Benvenuto Cellini, El Greco, Velázquez, Rogier van der Weyden, Paolo Veronese, Bernini, Alonso Cano, José de Ribera, Claudio Coello, and others. Giambattista Castello designed the magnificent main staircase. The library contains thousands of priceless manuscripts: for example, the collection of the sultan Zidan Abu Maali, who ruled Morocco from 1603 to 1627, is housed here.
Royal Monastery
Courtyard of the Kings
The main entrance of the El Escorial is the west façade, which has three doors: the middle one leads to the Courtyard of the Kings and the side ones lead to a school and to a monastery. Above the center door is a niche where the image of Saint Lawrence has been placed. The Courtyard of the Kings owes its name to the statues of the kings of Judah that adorn the façade of the basilica, located at the east end of the courtyard. Steps of red marble lead to the large, public chapel, past the narthex, which is one of the highlights of the basilica. The basilica has a floor in the shape of a Greek cross and an enormous dome, inspired by St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, above the crossing. The naves are covered over by barrel vaults decorated with frescoes by Luca Giordano. The main altarpiece is high and divided into compartments of different sizes where are found bronze sculptures, and canvases by Pellegrino Tibaldi, Federico Zuccari, and Leone Leoni. In the sacristy, paintings such as Joseph's Coat by Velázquez, The Last Supper by Titian, and The Adoration of the Sacred Host by Charles II by Claudio Coello are on exhibit.Under the royal chapel of the Basilica is the Royal Pantheon crypt. This is the place of burial for the kings of Spain. It is an octagonal Baroque mausoleum made of marble where all of the Spanish monarchs since Charles I have been buried, with the exception of Philip V, Ferdinand VI, and Amadeus of Savoy. The remains of the Count of Barcelona, the father of King Juan Carlos I of Spain, also rest in this pantheon despite the fact that the Count never became king himself. The enclosure is presided over by an altar of veined marble, and the sarcophagi are bronze and marble. There is also the Pantheon of the Princes, where the bodies of the queens who did not have a crowned succession and the princes and princesses were laid to rest. This part was built in the nineteenth century.
Next to the basilica, to the south, is the Courtyard of the Evangelists. This is a gardened patio in whose center rises a magnificent pavilion, by Juan de Herrera, in which one can find sculptures of the Evangelists. Around the courtyard are the galleries of the main cloister, decorated with frescoes by Tibaldi and his workshop, in which scenes from the history of the Redemption are represented. In the East gallery, one finds the splendid main staircase with a fresco-decorated vaulted ceiling depicting The glory of the Spanish monarchy, painted by Luca Giordano in 1692.
The Palace of the Austrians, also known as the House of the King, is found behind the presbytery of the basilica. The outbuildings of this palace, of Italian style, are distributed around the Courtyard of the Fountainheads. Inside the House of the King are the Sala de las Batallas, which contains frescoes of the battles of San Quintín and Higueruela, among others. The next building contains the rooms of Philip II and of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia. Another outbuilding is that of Alcoba del Rey, housing the bed in which Philip II died.