San Lorenzo de El Escorial Travel and Tourism Guide

An hour by bus from Madrid, El Escorial is a small, pleasant town best known for a pair of monuments to two of Spain's most poweful heads of state. King Philip II built his palace/monastery complex of San Lorenzo de El Escorial here in the 16th century, and it remains a special place to the royal family to this day.

Many visitors to El Escorial also visit the more recent, and more controversial, Valley of the Fallen (Valle de los Caidos) outside town. This massive structure contains the tomb of 20th-century dictator Francisco Franco, and is also a memorial to those who fought for him during the Spanish Civil War.