Day Trip: Madrid to San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain

During my first visit to Spain in 2016, San Lorenzo de El Escorial was one of my three day trips from Madrid. (Segovia and Toledo were the other ones.) If you’re interested in Spanish or European history — history that certainly goes back further than the United States’ 200-something years — San Lorenzo de El Escorial is a good place to visit. It’s also the starting point for the journey to the Valle de los Caídos, or Valley of the Fallen, if you’re planning to make that trip independent of a tour group.

Learn everything you need to know about this popular — if slightly underrated — day trip. Here’s how to get from Madrid to El Escorial.

San Lorenzo de El Escorial

Distance from Madrid: 62 km/39 miles

San Lorenzo de El Escorial is a town nestled in the Sierra de Guadarrama Mountains in the northwest of the Community of Madrid. Yep, it’s in the “state” of Madrid! For that reason, taking public transportation to get there is a little easier than most other day trips, but more on that later.

While the town is cute and certainly quieter and more peaceful than Madrid, the most important thing San Lorenzo has to offer is the Royal Monastery of El Escorial. It’s famous for being not only a monastery, but the historical residence of the King of Spain. And its official list of functions also included: basilica, pantheon, library, museum, university, school, and hospital. These days, it’s mostly just a museum, one of Spain’s many “Royal Sites” under the jurisdiction of the Patrimonio Nacional. El Escorial generally only gets about 500,000 visitors per year, and it’s been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1984.

Construction started on El Escorial in the 16th century, originally commissioned by King Felipe II to commemorate Spain’s 1557 victory against France in the Battle of St. Quentin. Renowned Spanish architect Juan Bautista de Toledo oversaw the construction. Interestingly, one of the king’s intended purposes for the building – on top of being the royal palace – was to be a final resting place for his parents and descendants.

So, there’s a lot going on here. Let’s talk about what it’s like to actually visit!

When you get there, you’ll have to buy your ticket (or I suppose you can do it online). It’s €12 for general admission or €6 for students under 25 with a student ID. Last time I went, I brought my old college ID and I was already 26, but they let me get the reduced price ticket anyway. Find out more about ticket prices on the El Escorial website. Don’t forget — it’s closed on Mondays!

After getting your ticket, you just follow the signs that guide you through your visit. The first stop is the courtyard, where you can enter the Royal Basilica. If it’s Sunday, you might find mass going on, but I think I remember that you can still sneak in quietly in the back.

As you go through the palace, you’ll learn a lot about the Bourbons and Hapsburgs that used to live here. But the most interesting thing, in my opinion, is located down in several flights of stairs in something like a basement. Remember how I said King Felipe wanted all his descendants to be buried there? Well, they were – and you can check it out for yourself.

You’re definitely not supposed to take pictures down there, but the first time I visited I was pretty much the only one there and no one was paying any attention to me.

There were rooms and rooms like this. Some of them had sculptures of the deceased lying on top of the marble tombs. Another room features a circle-shaped mausoleum for all the royal children who died, which gives the impression of a large morbid wedding cake.

Throughout the rest of the palace, you can visit royal bedrooms and long hallways overlooking the courtyard. My other favorite place — is it weird I consider the crypts to be one of my favorite places? — is the Royal Library. Apparently there are three libraries on the premises, but this is the only one you can visit, and I’m sure it’s the best one, too.

Unfortunately, photos also aren’t allowed in the library, and being in a more open space than the burial chamber, it’s much more enforceable. So I’ll just have to describe it to you.

The library houses more than 40,000 volumes in a long, beautiful hall with marble floors and wooden shelves. In fact, its design is said to have been the inspiration for the Vatican’s library. On the ceiling is a giant fresco painting spanning the length of the hall, devoted to the seven liberal arts: rhetoric, dialectic, music, grammar, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. As a graduate of a liberal arts college, I especially loved this.

Interestingly, the books on the shelves have spines facing inward. The pages face outward and allegedly the books’ titles are written on them in order to help the reader find their desired book. Really, the whole experience makes you feel like you’re in Hogwarts’s library or something.

Moving outside, you can’t miss the royal gardens. Pretty much every palace in Spain — whether Christian or Muslim — seems to have one, and El Escorial is no exception. As you wander through the maze of hedges and fountains, see how many peacocks you can find!

Overall, El Escorial is a great place to visit if you’re interested in Spanish or European history dating back to the Renaissance. As always, it can be nice to get out of the big city to a more peaceful place near the mountains.

And while you’re there, definitely try to visit Valle de Los Caídos! You’re already so close. (The once-daily bus leaves at 3:15 from the bus station, so make sure you’ve finished your El Escorial visit by then!)

Get to San Lorenzo de El Escorial by…

Bus:

1. Take the metro to Moncloa station via Line 3 or Line 6 (Circular). Depending on where you’re coming from, this should cost approximately €1.50 if you’re in Zone A (closer to the center of the city).
2. Moncloa is both a metro and bus station, so from here you’ll need to get to Bus 661 to El Escorial. The ticket costs €2.50; it departs approximately every 15-30 minutes during the weekdays and less frequently on weekends. If you’re having a hard time finding it, don’t be afraid to ask someone who works at the station. A charter-style bus will transport you about an hour outside the city.
3. You’ll arrive at Estación de Autobuses San Lorenzo de El Escorial. (It’s about a 10-minute walk to the monastery.)

Train (Cercanías):

1. If you’re living in Madrid and already have an abono, this is the best option, because you can get to San Lorenzo de El Escorial for “free.” If you don’t have the abono and want to take the train, I think you can also buy a single or day ticket at one of the kiosks inside any of the Cercanías stations, but I’m not certain of the cost.
2. You have a choice of which station you want to depart from – it just has to be on the C-3 or C-3a Cercanías lines. Most likely, you’ll leave from Atocha, Sol, Nuevos Ministerios, Chamartín, or Mirasierra/Paco de Lucía. These are the easiest stations to reach via metro. The train leaves about once per hour, so make sure to check the schedule.
3. After 45 minutes to an hour, you’ll arrive at Estación El Escorial. From here, you can walk about 20 minutes to the monastery.

 

Have you ever visited El Escorial? What are your favorite things about it? Leave me a comment!

-Cathy

Originally Published on July 15, 2019.