San Lorenzo de El Escorial

The town exists because of the monastery. In 1558 Philip II appointed a commission of architects, doctors and quarrymen to find a site for a great royal foundation, and in 1561 they chose the hamlet of El Escorial at the foot of Mount Abantos for its forests, quarries, game, good water and position near the centre of Spain. The first stone was laid on 23 April 1563. Juan Bautista de Toledo designed the plan; after his death in 1567 his apprentice Juan de Herrera took over and finished the building in 1584, in a little under 21 years. Philip dedicated it to Saint Lawrence in thanks for the victory at Saint Quentin on 10 August 1557.

Around it Philip created a royal estate for farming, hunting and recreation, and in 1585–86 papal bulls removed the monastery from the authority of the Archbishop of Toledo. Building houses near the monastery was forbidden until 3 May 1767, when Charles III allowed homes beside its market; within a few years the new settlement had more than a thousand people. In the 18th century the two casitas and a court theatre were added, and on 26 September 1836 San Lorenzo became a municipality separate from the older village below.

In the Civil War the town stayed loyal to the Republic and briefly called itself El Escorial de la Sierra. Between 1940 and 1959 the Franco regime built its great memorial in the valley of Cuelgamuros, on the edge of the municipality. In 1984 UNESCO listed the monastery and its site as a World Heritage Site, and in recent decades new neighbourhoods have spread up the slopes of Abantos.

El Escorial is the clearest expression in stone of Philip II's Spain: built of grey local granite, square and sparsely ornamented, it looks more like a fortress than a palace. It is at once monastery, basilica, royal palace, pantheon, library and school. The Royal Pantheon beneath the basilica holds the tombs of most Spanish kings from Charles V onwards, and the Royal Library, its ceiling painted with frescoes, is among the monastery's most remarkable rooms. Herrera's plain, geometric design gave its name to the Herrerian style.

The town's culture has grown around the monastery and the court. The 18th-century Real Coliseo, a theatre known as La Bombonera, stands in the town, which has a professional music conservatory and a university centre, the Real Centro Universitario Escorial-María Cristina, where the Complutense University holds its summer courses.

Local tradition centres on the religious calendar. The town's feast falls on 10 August, the day of Saint Lawrence, and the romería, or pilgrimage, of Our Lady of Grace is described as its most important tradition. In January the feasts of San Antón and San Sebastián are shared with the neighbouring village of El Escorial. The Valley of Cuelgamuros, where Franco lay buried until 2019, remains a subject of political debate across Spain.

About 18,900 people lived in the municipality in 2025, on an area of about 56 square kilometres, much of it protected forest. The town has grown strongly in the 20th and 21st centuries, spreading from the streets around the monastery up the mountainside.

Tourism, hospitality and trade are the main economic activities. Most visitors come on day trips from Madrid, and the town has worked to draw longer stays through hotels, trade fairs, conferences and courses. The memorial at Cuelgamuros, on the outskirts, draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.

Daily life has a mountain-town rhythm: cooler summers than the city below, cold winters, and walks in the woods of La Herrería and on Abantos. Building has spread over the parts of the municipality without legal protection, especially on the south-eastern slope of the mountain after a fire in August 1999 burned about 1.8 square kilometres of pine forest.

San Lorenzo's restaurants serve the cooking of the Madrid region and Castile. The cocido madrileño, a chickpea-based stew with meats and vegetables, is the classic dish of the region, and callos a la madrileña, usually made with cattle tripe, is a traditional winter speciality. The cocido is most popular in winter and is served in stages, beginning with its broth, to which noodles are added. Most of the people eating in the town are visitors on day trips from Madrid, the usual way the town is seen.

Most restaurants and cafés are in the historic centre, many of them on the streets facing the monastery and its broad forecourt, and a fixed-price menú del día is the usual lunch. Calle de Floridablanca, one of the main streets of the old town, has bars and restaurants among its shops.

As everywhere in Spain, meals run late: lunch is the main meal of the day. In summer the cooler mountain air makes outdoor dining more pleasant than in the capital.