![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Travelogue
Got up not quite as early as yesterday and took the subway to the bus to the town of El Escorial, which surrounds the Royal Monastery of St. Lawrence at El Escorial. See, in 1557 King Philip II won a major military victory on St. Lawrence's Day, and in celebration, he spent twenty years and mind-boggling amounts of money building a combination monastery, basilica, school, library, and Royal palace.
It's not the warm, cuddly sort of royal palace; indeed, it makes most royal palaces look warm and cuddly by comparison, and the guidebooks describe it as resembling a penitentiary from the outside.
And even from the inside.
The library, which connects the monastery side of the building with the school side, is somewhat friendlier.
It boasts a number of 1000+-year-old Arabic, Latin, and Greek texts, and at least four volumes of Alfonso X El Sabio (two versions of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a book on astronomy, and one on the properties of stones).
We squeed over the Cantigas ms out on display in a glass case, then realized it was a facsimile (the same facsimile edition D. had access to when she interned at the Lily Library as a student).
But the real one is probably somewhere in that room, or at least that building.
The Basilica is decorated by top-notch 16th-century artists, such as Titian and Cellini, but again it's designed to be coldly perfect and impressive rather than welcoming.
The school side of the building, I think, still functions as a school and isn't open to the public, while the monastery side appears to serve only as art gallery and office space. It's crammed full of Titians, El Grecos, Tintorettos, Bosch-followers, and lesser lights. Mostly very well done, but this idiom really doesn't do anything for me.... Behind the Basilica are the royal residences, which Philip and his long line of descendants made liveable... and decorated with oil paintings, frescoes, tapestries (with cartoons by Goya), etc. including a lot of paintings of battles. I picked out some that had good pictures of tents.
Some of the walkways inside the complex look like Nine Men's Morris boards:
And the whole place is surrounded by starkly-beautiful mountains:
Had lunch across the street from the Monasterio, then caught a bus back to Madrid. It was only about 4 PM, but we were too fried to go back to the archaeological museum. Next trip, I guess.
It's not the warm, cuddly sort of royal palace; indeed, it makes most royal palaces look warm and cuddly by comparison, and the guidebooks describe it as resembling a penitentiary from the outside.
And even from the inside.
The library, which connects the monastery side of the building with the school side, is somewhat friendlier.
It boasts a number of 1000+-year-old Arabic, Latin, and Greek texts, and at least four volumes of Alfonso X El Sabio (two versions of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a book on astronomy, and one on the properties of stones).
We squeed over the Cantigas ms out on display in a glass case, then realized it was a facsimile (the same facsimile edition D. had access to when she interned at the Lily Library as a student).
But the real one is probably somewhere in that room, or at least that building.
The Basilica is decorated by top-notch 16th-century artists, such as Titian and Cellini, but again it's designed to be coldly perfect and impressive rather than welcoming.
The school side of the building, I think, still functions as a school and isn't open to the public, while the monastery side appears to serve only as art gallery and office space. It's crammed full of Titians, El Grecos, Tintorettos, Bosch-followers, and lesser lights. Mostly very well done, but this idiom really doesn't do anything for me.... Behind the Basilica are the royal residences, which Philip and his long line of descendants made liveable... and decorated with oil paintings, frescoes, tapestries (with cartoons by Goya), etc. including a lot of paintings of battles. I picked out some that had good pictures of tents.
Some of the walkways inside the complex look like Nine Men's Morris boards:
And the whole place is surrounded by starkly-beautiful mountains:
Had lunch across the street from the Monasterio, then caught a bus back to Madrid. It was only about 4 PM, but we were too fried to go back to the archaeological museum. Next trip, I guess.