Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial

The Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial is one of the great buildings of the Renaissance world. Philip II commissioned it in 1563 as a monastery, royal palace, library, and dynastic mausoleum combined — a statement of Counter-Reformation piety and Habsburg power built in granite over the course of 21 years. It is vast, geometrically severe, and utterly unlike anything else in Spain.

Inside, the monastery holds one of Europe's finest collections of tapestries, a library with thousands of illuminated manuscripts, and paintings by El Greco, Titian, Velázquez, and Bosch. The Royal Pantheon below the church is the burial vault of Spanish monarchs from Charles V to Alfonso XIII: a circular chamber of black marble and bronze where thirty-four kings and queens lie in identical marble sarcophagi arranged in tiers. Tickets include access to the palace apartments, which are preserved in their original 16th-century state with Philip II's spartan study and his wooden wheelchair on display. Allow at least three hours; a rushed visit misses too much.

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A story
Philip II chose to build El Escorial on the site of the Battle of San Quintín (1557), where Spanish forces defeated the French on the feast day of St Lawrence (San Lorenzo). The saint's emblem is a gridiron — on which he was roasted alive — and the monastery's austere grid plan of courtyards, towers, and corridors is said to be a deliberate architectural echo of that instrument. Philip approved the design personally and oversaw construction from a granite seat carved into the hillside above.