The monastery of EL ESCORIAL was the largest Spanish building of the Renaissance: rectangular, overbearing and severe, from the outside it more resembles a prison than a palace. Built between 1563 and 1584, it was originally the creation of Juan Bautista de Toledo, though his one-time assistant, Juan de Herrera , took over and is normally given credit for the design. Felipe II planned the complex as both monastery and mausoleum, where he would live the life of a monk and "rule the world with two inches of paper". Later monarchs had less ascetic lifestyles, enlarging and richly decorating the palace quarters, but Felipe's simple rooms, with the chair that supported his gouty leg and the deathbed from which he could look across into the church where Mass was constantly celebrated, remain the most fascinating.

 

There's more to see than you can fit into a single day without total exhaustion, and you're liable to end up agreeing with Augustus Hare that while the Escorial "is so profoundly curious that it must of necessity be visited, it is so utterly dreary and so hopelessly fatiguing a sight that it requires the utmost patience to endure it"