A Walk in the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso - Spain

Hello everyone. I want to talk about a very unusual palace in Spain, completely unlike the other imperial palaces. This place is also called the Spanish Versailles. I will try to explain why it is called that and the name of this place is La Granja de San Ildefonso. Back in the fifteenth century, royal hunting grounds were located here. And King Enrique eventually had a chapel built here in honor of Saint Ildefonso. In fact that is exactly where the name of this place comes from. However, this area was later handed over to the Geronimite monks at the monastery in Segovia. And actually the name La Granja comes from this as well. Because the word La Granja literally means farm. So this place was like a retreat area, they were growing things here. In short they had a farm here.

Later when Philip the Fifth, the first of the Bourbon dynasty came to power, he liked this place so much that he decided to establish his own palace here. Or rather not even a palace, but a country residence. The thing was, he did not really enjoy governing and had pinned his great hopes on his sucessor, Luis the First. He planned to step away from state affairs when Luis ascended the throne, take refuge here, rest and welcome his old age in this place. But Luis passed away suddenly and Philip the Fifth had to deal with state affairs once again. La Granja on the other hand, was now transformed and completed into a magnificent royal imperial country residence.

Philip was born in Versailles and missed France. That is why he naturally built the palace in the French style, the French Baroque style. However this French Baroque, which is a nod to Versailles, is situated right in the middl of the mountains here, the Sierra de Guadarrama. And it must be said that this is a very interesting location. Because right on the other side of this mountain range lies El Escorial, which we also visited. There Philip the Second had demonstrated or rather reflected, the power of the Spanish Empire. Philip the Fifth did not like El Escorial at all, which is why he decided to build a palace specifically for himself.

The palace is quite large, but not all rooms are open for touring. That is according to my feeling, roughly a third of it is open. There are several quite remarkable details. First of course, are the wonderful stucco decorations here. Baroque style, gilded stucco decorations. The paintings on the ceilings are wonderful, completely fascinating. This definitely adds a certain volume to the space. A tremendous number of crystal chandeliers caught my attention. Moreover these are very serious, almost monumental chandeliers.

From a layout perspective, as can be understood, this is a completely palacestyle enfilade or rooms opening into one another arrangement. On the second floor there are private rooms, some studies, bedrooms and reception halls. On the first floor there are mostly ceremonial rooms. One of the things that I found quite interesting was the presence of many brightly colored rooms. The luxurious yellow dining room, the magnificent red mirrored room and also the lacquer room, which was used as the bedroom of Philip and Isabella Farnese. As for the lacquer room, it should be noted that this is a real chinoiserie brought from Southeast Asia. At first these were screens, but the screens were dismantled and the panels were placed on the walls and such an elegant space emerged.

From the second floor, we went back down to the first floor via a walnut staircase. Btw it cannot be said that this is a very rare situation, but it is not the most common either. Because staircases in palaces were usually made of marble. And here we move on to more elegant and ceremonial rooms. There are a few interesting points here as well. First there is the Fountain of Galatea, hidden away in a small room. And this fountain is covered with real seashells. This is quite unusual. Secondly there are a lot of clocks in the ceremonial halls. I had never noticed so many clocks in palacs before. Moreover they are all different, interesting, the products of different craftsmen and different schools.

I also found the Hall of Triumphs remarkable. There we see statues of Roman emperors. Moreover statues of marble, bronze and gilt. But in reality some of these statues were cast from lead and painted to look like marble or bronze. So it seems that, at some stage, even kings run out of money when doing renovations and have to save on things. And here is another mirrored room made of marble where real marble was used this time. Here you might perhaps ask the question: Why are there so many mirrors? We haven't seen this many mirrors anywhere. The thing is, Philip suffered from depression. He had a melancholic nature and would even sometimes lose his mind and think he was a frog. So, to prevent him from being trapped in dark rooms, the rooms were painted in bright colors and many mirrors were placed to increase the sunlight and ensure the spaces were maximumly bright.

There is another interesting fact related to the production of these mirrors. The mirrors were manufactured locally here by local craftsmen who stole the production secrets of Bohemian and Venetian glass and miror makers. And they reached such a level of craftsmanship that they made giant mirror panels of a size that even France could not boast of at the time.

It is clear that the real value of this palace is not its interiors. We have seen much cooler palaces too. However the garden here is completely magical and very unusual for Spain. Firstly it is really a garden in front of the mountains. And this regular planning against the backdrop of coniferous trees, this regular baroque palace looks really unusual. Another unusual thing is that there are many fountains, cascades and a tremendous amount of water here in general. This unfortunately, is not very typical for Spain either. The main cascade directly facing the palace is currently under restoration. However there are many more interesting water basins here. As for the fountains unfortunately, they are not working right now. According to the conditions of that period, completely crazy enginering technologies were applied here. The thing is, all the fountains operate with the natural pressure of water coming directly from the mountains. And the main fountain shoots water up to a height of forty-seven meters. I think this is definitely wonderful information too.

Another interesting architectural detail of this palace is this gallery with balconies. The windows would open and a kind of runway would form there. Ladies would take walks here and showcase their outfits to the gentlemen who were presumably in the garden. Because they did not want to soil their dresses with garden dust, they took advantage of this architectural feature of the palace. In fact this runway is considered one of the longest runways in the world. I don't know how many meters it is. And in general I don't remember coming across anything similar anywhere else.

We arrived next to the Fountain of Diana. And there is a very amusing story about this fountain. As you have already noticed, Philip was investing tremendous amounts of money in the palace, the garden and the fountains. And so, when this fountain was ready they invited Philip turned the fountain on, the fountain ran for three minutes and Philip said: I spent three million for this and watched it for three minutes. Complete nonsense. And after that day, while he was alive this fountain was never turned on again. By the way you can notice here that the figures painted with bronze paint are not bronze at all. That is, in some places, that paint has peeled off and it shows that it is lead. Another interesting thing is that this portal, where the lead bronze mix Diana is located, is covered with scallop shells. That is by its French name, coquille Saint-Jacques, meaning the seashell of Saint James. As you will remember, this very scallop shell is the symbol of the Way of Saint James. Therefore I think there is a connection here with this very recognized and revered character.

When we were at El Escorial, we also visited the royal pantheon and I mentioned that almost all Spanish kings were buried there. Of course, from the construction of this pantheon onwards, almost all of them were buried there, as you can guess, because Philip the Fifth was not buried there. Since he did not want to be interred there, they built a church here. And in fact the pantheon of Philip and Isabella Farnese is located right inside this church. And the church, despite its relatively small size, is of course very intensely decorated. It is immediately understood to be a royal burial site.

If we talk about practical matters. La Granja is located about a little over an hour's drive from the center of Madrid. And I think it is necessary to allocate about three hours to tour and see the palace, the pantheon and the park. This would be at a dynamic pace, but at a comfortable pace, it takes four, maybe four and a half hours. Entry to the palace is nine euros. The park, on the other hand, is free. Therefore, if you are not very interested in historical interiors, you can observe the historical exteriors and of course, this wonderful landscape design.

I hope you enjoyed my walk. I liked it very much. And I think if you happen to be in the capital of Spain during the summer period, visiting La Granja is a very good idea for a short summer getaway from Madrid, as it is cooler and a bit more pleasant here thanks to the mountains. By the way there is one more story about this. They used to store ice here for the royal palace. Of course, in winter they would keep this ice in special wells, then they would bring it to make refreshing drinks and ice cream. Therefore, coming here to cool off in summer is a really good idea.