Castles · Tour

Private El Escorial Ending in the Hall of the Battles

A private guide, priority entry, and a route through El Escorial that ends in the room most day tours never reach. The monastery was built to display the power and the money of the Habsburg dynasty, and it still does. The library is the clearest evidence of Philip II's humanism: a king who collected science and art on the same shelves and put them under a painted vault. The basilica sets out the religion that ran alongside it. In the Royal Pantheon the tour deals with the people rather than the architecture, including John of Austria, the illegitimate son of Charles V, who is buried in the building he was never quite allowed to belong to. The route finishes in the Hall of the Battles, a long gallery painted end to end with Spanish victories, figure by figure, in a detail that repays standing still for. It is the one room where the monastery stops being austere. Afterwards the Renaissance gardens are open. They were laid out for the kings and the monks together, they look out over the mountains and the forest, and peacocks live in them. The guide waits at the entrance under the Spanish flag, opposite the Tourism Office, carrying an Isabella Trébede tote bag.