Unesco-listed San Lorenzo de El Escorial was fulfilment of Philip II’s dream of raising monastery in a ‘desert’
Despite perching imperiously on a mountainside near Madrid for the better part of five centuries, the royal monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial has yet to give up all its treasures – or all its secrets.
Forty years after it was included on Unesco’s World Heritage list, Philip II’s austere monument to power, piety and patronage is undergoing a major reorganisation that will allow visitors to enjoy the peace of a previously off-limits monastic patio and to look at paintings once reserved for the royal gaze.
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