ESCORIAL, or ESCURIAL, in Spain, one of the most remarkable buildings in Europe, comprising at once a convent, a church, a palace and a mausoleum. The Escorial is situated 3432 ft. above the sea, on the south-western slopes of the Sierra de Guadarrama, and thus within the borders of the province of Madrid and the kingdom of New Castile. By the Madrid-Avila railway it is 31 m. N.W. of Madrid. The surrounding country is a sterile and gloomy wilderness exposed to the cold and blighting blasts of the Sierra. According to the usual tradition, which there seems no sufficient reason to reject, the Escorial owes its existence to a vow made by Philip II. of Spain (1556-1598), shortly after the battle of St Quentin, in which his forces succeeded in routing the army of France. The day of the victory, the 10th of August 1557, was sacred to St Laurence; and accordingly the building was dedicated to that saint, and received the title of _El real monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial_. The last distinctive epithet was derived from the little hamlet in the vicinity which furnished shelter, not only to the workmen, but to the monks of St Jerome who were afterwards to be in possession of the monastery; and the hamlet itself is generally but perhaps erroneously supposed to be indebted for its name to the _scoriae_ or dross of certain old iron mines. The preparation of the plans and the superintendence of the work were entrusted by the king to Juan Bautista de Toledo, a Spanish architect who had received most of his professional education in Italy. The first stone was laid in April 1563; and under the king's personal inspection the work rapidly advanced. Abundant supplies of _berroquena_, a granite-like stone, were obtained in the neighbourhood, and for rarer materials the resources of both the Old and the New World were put under contribution. The death of Toledo in 1567 threatened a fatal blow at the satisfactory completion of the enterprise, but a worthy successor was found in Juan Herrera, Toledo's favourite pupil, who adhered in the main to his master's designs. On the 13th of September 1584 the last stone of the masonry was laid, and the works were brought to a termination in 1593. Each successive occupant of the Spanish throne has done something, however slight, to the restoration or adornment of Philip's convent-palace, and Ferdinand VII. (1808-1833) did so much in this way that he has been called a second founder. In all its principal features, however, the Escorial remains what it was made by the genius of Toledo and Herrera working out the grand, if abnormal, desires of their master.