Castles · Tour

Private El Escorial, a Building That Has Been Nine Things at Once

Two monuments outside Madrid, taken privately, with the older and the newer history of Spain in the same afternoon. El Escorial is the reason to book. Over four centuries the same complex has worked as a monastery, a basilica, a royal palace, a pantheon, a library, a museum, a university, a school and a hospital, sometimes several of them at once. Philip II built it that way on purpose, and it is the clearest way into his reign and into the century Spain spent running most of the known world. It has been on the World Heritage list since 1984 and stands about two kilometres up the valley from the town of El Escorial. The Valley of the Fallen is the other half, and the newer one: a monument of the Franco regime, a Catholic basilica and a memorial, built in the Cuelgamuros valley in the Sierra de Guadarrama. Tickets for the interior are bought separately, so that stop can be taken inside or from the outside as the group prefers. The drive out crosses the Guadarrama countryside, which is a large part of why either building is where it is. The guide waits on the corner of Calle Julio Camba and Calle Alcalá with an Amigo Tours sign.