Description

All the Spanish monarchs are buried in Escorial. During our excursion you’ll see the treasury of the country and the priceless works of art of such great masters as Titian, Bosch, Goya and Tintoretto from the collection of the Habsburgs. The magnificent grey bulk of complex San Lorenzo de El Escorial doesn’t fit the image of the palace luxury. The guide in Escorial will show you the privy rooms of the king Philip II (for whom Escorial was built during 1563-1584), decorated with the emphasized austerity.
The guide in Escorial will tell you that chief architect of Escorial was Juan Batista de Toledo. After his death in 1567, his post was taken up by Juan de Herrera. The severe style of the castle was called desornamento.
The trip to Escorial will show you that Escorial was and remains architectural city with its basilica, library, museum of art, etc. As for the basilica, the most interesting interior detail of the huge church is a magnificent altar and the marble “Crucifixion” of Cellini in the chapel.

The library keeps the collection of more than 40000 volumes, including the books from the personal collection of Philip II. Here you can see the rare precious manuscripts, for example, the poem of Alfonso X el Sabio).

The tomb of the kings

There are burial urns of the Spanish kings inside the marble mausoleum.

The Museum of Art

There are pictures of Flemish, Italian and Spanish painters on the second floor of museum. The gem of the collection is the painting “Golgotha” of the Flemish master of XV century Rogier van der Weyden.

Trip to Valle de los Caidos (Valley of the Fallen)

The memorial complex called “Valle de los Caidos” is situated just 20 minutes away to the north of Escorial. During our trip to “Valle de los Caidos” you will see that the Holy Christ was built by order of Franco to commemorate the victims of the Civil War. It is arranged 13 km away from Escorial. The huge Christ, crowning it, is visible from afar. The guide in “Valle de los Caidos” will tell you that Franco thought this monument would symbolize reconciliation of sides. However, a lot of Spaniards saw it as a triumph of dictatorship. Whatever, the scale of the monument is very impressive: the height of Christ is 150 m, and the basilica, carved out in a rock, is 250 m in depth. The memorial was built by the convicted republicans, and the labor, lasting more than 20 years, took a lot of lives. Franco is buried in the basilica, under the white plate at the altar. There is a grave of the main ideologist of Falangists Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera on the opposite. Behind the basilica you can see the graves of 4000 soldiers from the both parties; the identities of two of them are still unfixed.

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