El Escorial - Madrid, Spain - Renaissance Architecture on Waymarking.com

"The Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial is an immense palace, Augustinian monastery, museum, and library complex located at San Lorenzo de El Escorial a town 45 kilometres (28 miles) northwest of Madrid in the autonomous community of Madrid in Spain.

At the foot of the Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range, the complex was commanded by King Philip II of Spain as a necropolis for the Spanish monarchs and the seat of studies in aid of the Counter-Reformation. It was designed by the architects Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera in an austere classical style, and built from 1563 to 1584. It is shaped as a grid in memory of the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence. It is said that during the battle of Saint Quentin (1557), the Spanish troops destroyed a small hermitage devoted to Lawrence. The King Philip II of Spain decided to dedicate the monastery to the saint in thanks for his victory.


The façade of the chapel, in the Baroque style of Jesuit churches, is integrated with the palatial facade
El EscorialThe complex has an enormous store of art, including masterworks by Titian, Tintoretto, El Greco, Velázquez, Roger van der Weyden, Paolo Veronese, Alonso Cano, José de Ribera, Claudio Coello and others. Also at the complex is a library containing thousands of priceless ancient manuscripts like the collection of the Moroccan sultan Zidan Abu Maali (r.1603–1627). Giambattista Castello designed the main staircase.

It is the burial site for most Spanish kings in the last five centuries, from the houses of Habsburg and Bourbon. The Royal Pantheon contains the tombs of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (King Charles I of Spain), Philip II, Philip III, Philip IV, Charles II, Louis I, Charles III, Charles IV, Ferdinand VII, Isabel II, Alfonso XII and Alfonso XIII. The two Bourbon kings Philip V and Ferdinand VI, as well as King Amadeo of Savoy (1870-1873), are not buried in the Monastery.

The complex is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is an extremely popular tourist attraction, often visited as a day trip from Madrid."

Text from patrimonionacional.es


The Architecture

"The starkness that Machuca, along with his contemporary Diego de Siloe, introduced into Spanish architecture was the dominant feature of the Escorial—the extraordinary building that epitomized Spain's architecture after mid-century and was Philip II's monument to posterity. Philip's architects were Juan Bautista de Toledo and, after Toledo's death in 1567, Juan de Herrera. Both architects knew Italy and Toledo had practiced architecture there. He designed the Escorial, thirty miles northwest of Madrid, as an enormous rectangular precinct enclosing a royal palace, a monastery, and a church. The cornerstone was laid in 1563, and the complex finished in 1584. The period of its construction corresponded to the years of the Catholic Reform after the Council of Trent, and the building's astonishing severity and sobriety were indicative of both the religious spirit of Spain and of Philip II's own fervent Catholicism. His was a strict, ascetic faith, reflected in the Escorial's unadorned façades, rigid rectangular layout of spaces, and square towers marking each of the four corners of the building."

— Marvin Trachtenberg and Isabelle Hyman. Architecture: from Prehistory to Post-Modernism. p333.

Date of origin:: 1562 to 1584 Architect(s): Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera Style: Late Renaissance (ca. 1580–1620) Web site of the object (if exists): [Web Link] Type of building (structure): Large religious building (church, monastery, synagogue...) Address: Calle de Juan de Borbón y Battemberg s/n, 28200 San Lorenzo de El Escorial (Madrid)

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