San Lorenzo de El Escorial

The first thing that strikes you is the colour – or lack of it. From the train window the monastery appears as a single slab of grey granite clamped to the mountainside, more fortress than palace. Then the doors open, the altitude nips your lungs, and Madrid’s commuter belt suddenly feels a very long way below.

San Lorenzo de El Escorial sits at 1,032 m on the southern flank of the Sierra de Guadarrama, 47 km north-west of the capital. The town was built to service a building, not the other way round, and it still shows. Every street tilts towards the Royal Monastery, every plaza frames a view of its towers, and every local business depends, one way or another, on the half-million visitors who troop through each year.

A building that eats the day

Philip II ordered the monastery-pantheon-library-royal palace in 1563 to celebrate a victory over the French at Saint-Quentin; the result is the largest Renaissance structure on earth. The grey stone soaks up light, so even on a bright April morning the interior feels cool and slightly sepulchral. Allow three hours: the Basilica alone swallows forty minutes once you start staring at the frescoed cupola, and the Royal Pantheon – where twenty-six Spanish monarchs lie in marble coffins the size of canoe crates – stops most visitors in their tracks. English audio-guides are free on the Patrimonio Nacional app; download it while you queue so you can pause the commentary and gawp without juggling a handset.

Weekends and religious holidays bring communions in the basilica; if a wedding party is using the high altar you will be barred from half the complex and staff will not let you back in later. Check the “cultos” notice on the website the night before and book the earliest slot you can face.

Outside, the Jardín de los Frailes drops away on stepped terraces. It’s a five-minute walk from the ticket office but usually empty: cypress, box hedge and stone benches where monks once read Thomas à Kempis in the original Latin. Bring a sandwich – there is no café inside the gates – and remember that polished sixteenth-century granite is lethal when wet. Rubber soles are non-negotiable.

Uphill both ways

The old town is a granite crab shell clinging to the slope beneath the monastery. Streets have names like Calle Floridablanca and Calle San Antonio, but the quickest way to navigate is to look for the towers: if you can see them, you’re below; if you can’t, you’ve climbed too high. The Plaza de la Constitución is the natural meeting point, arcaded on three sides and lined with cafés whose terraces spill across the stone. Coffee is Madrid-priced (€2.20 an Americano) but the people-watching is first-rate: German hikers in gaiters, Spanish schoolchildren clutching worksheets, retired Brits comparing the Prado unfavourably with the National Gallery.

From the square it is a steep ten-minute climb to the Casita del Príncipe, a smaller royal retreat set in its own park. The house itself is closed on Mondays, but the gardens stay open and give the best view back towards the monastery without paying another entrance fee. Locals walk dogs here; the grass is dotted with sweet chestnuts in October and the air smells of resin and cold stone.

Mountain lungs

Behind the town the Abantos ridge rises to 1,750 m. A way-marked loop leaves from the monastery car park, climbs through pine and scree, and reaches the Silla de Felipe II – two granite armchairs carved into the rock where the king supposedly sat to supervise construction. The story is probably apocryphal, but the panorama across Madrid’s meseta is genuine: on a clear winter day you can pick out the Cuatro Torres skyline 60 km away. The path is rough: loose stone, 250 m ascent, no handrails. After rain it becomes a stream; in January ice makes it treacherous. Turn back at the first white-painted waymark if you’re in trainers – the ridge proper needs boots.

Easier going is the Herrería estate on the north side: eucalyptus shade, flat earth tracks and a picnic site beside a stream where marsh tits hang upside-down from the branches. It’s popular with Madrid families on Sunday mornings; arrive before eleven to get a parking space.

Roast lamb and railway timetables

Lunch options divide neatly into “with a view of the monastery” and “without”. The former charge 20% more; the latter feed the locals. La Cueva, tucked under the soportales of Plaza de la Constitución, occupies an eighteenth-century coaching inn with stone floors dark as Guinness. The menu is Castilian safe: roast suckling lamb (€24 half-ration, plenty for two), judiones bean stew, and house red from nearby San Martín de Valdeiglesias. If you need something quicker, Ronnie’s Family Diner on the top floor of the bus station does a respectable bacon cheeseburger and has high-chairs – a lifesaver if the eight-year-old has hit palace-fatigue.

Trains back to Madrid run every hour from 6 a.m. to 10.30 p.m. The C-3 Cercanías takes 55 minutes to Sol and costs €2.60 – cheaper than a single on the London Underground. Sunday evenings fill up with day-trippers; board a stop early at the monastery siding if you want a seat.

When to come, when to stay away

April–May and September–October give blue skies without the capital’s furnace heat. At 1,000 m nights stay cool, so pack a fleece even when Madrid forecasts 30°C. July and August are tolerable before noon, but the monastery’s stone turns into a radiator by two o’clock and the surrounding pine hills are tinder-dry – smoking is banned on all trails. Winter is crisp, often snowy on the ridge, and wonderfully quiet inside the palace: you may share the Pantheon with only a guard and the echo of your own footsteps. Avoid 10 August (local fiesta) and any national puente; on those days the town feels like Oxford Street with altitude.

San Lorenzo is not a place to tick off quickly. It is a granite hinge between courtly Spain and mountain Spain, where kings planned empires and woodcutters still stack chestnut logs outside cottage doors. Arrive early, wear sensible shoes, and let the building set the pace. If you find yourself still in the library at closing time, listening to the squeak of a guard’s shoes on the parquet, you will understand why Philip II never bothered to build a summer retreat anywhere else.