Situated thirty-one miles from Madrid and overlooking the intermediate landscape, this prodigious congeries of buildings occupies a rocky plateau that juts out from the precipitous side of the Guadarrama Sierra and is extended by immense foundations. Its plan, which tradition says was to reproduce the gridiron on which St. Lawrence suffered martyrdom, is a gigantic rectangle, 675 feet by 530, from which projects the handle, a small rectangle. One enters on the mountain side, the Patio of the Kings. Along the right extends the monastery, terminating in the cloistered Patio of the Evangelists; while along the left is the College, terminating in the Palace. But the chief feature is in front of us, the vestibule of the church. The latter is built over the mausoleum-crypt, in the form of a Greek cross, after the original plan of S. Peter’s, Rome. Its Capilla Mayor adjoins the small projecting annex, which contained the private apartments of the royal family: the King’s small, cell-like bedroom, commanding a view of the High Altar, so that, unseen, he could participate in the service of the Mass. The work was begun by Juan de Bautista and continued by Juan de Herrera. But Philip himself perpetually supervised the design, which reflects his character not only in the ambitiousness of its dimensions but also in the grim plainness of the façades. Constructed of grey granite, cut in large blocks, they are composed of five stories, the windows of which are square headed, without dressing of any kind, and ranged in rows, without any attempt at grouping, so that the façades present a bare and barrack-like appearance. Meanwhile an effect of grandeur is produced by the immense scale of the whole mass, while the sky-line is rendered imposing by the towers, crowned with lanterns, which flank the façade of the church, and by the noble dome and lantern, built entirely of stone, on which rises in sequence a pyramid, a hollow ball, and a cross. The interior of the church, designed in the Doric order with flattish vaulting, is again of majestic scale and of extreme simplicity, which, however, is contradicted by the extravagant paintings on the ceilings. A feature of the church is the removal of the coro from the floor to a gallery so that there is less interference than usual in a Spanish church with the impressiveness of space. The severely classical style of the Escoriál was a reaction from the luxuriousness of the plateresque and the extravagance of the so-called “Grotesque Style,” which Berruguete, a pupil of Michelangelo, introduced into his sculptural decorations. The absence of embellishment and reliance upon a strict use of the orders caused the classic style to be known as _Griego-Romano_, though, as a matter of fact, it was in nowise Greek.