Philip II

La cerca de Felipe II – It’s not that kind of wall.

/ antonioyrocinante / Leave a comment

There is a lot of talk lately about walls, and there are a lot of walls, no need for me to mention them here.

But I recently explored a lesser-known wall, which had a quite different purpose than most walls…

You see, Felipe II, in the 1500s decided to build an almost 32-mile wall around his Escorial Palace (the largest Renaissance building in the world, read about it here), but not to keep people out, there were plenty of gates, but to keep wildlife in, as in hunting game, so he could hunt it!

This wall, the Cerca de Felipe II was not finished in his lifetime, nor his son’s Felipe II, nor his grandson’s Felipe IV, but continued being built into the Bourbon dynasty in the 18th Century!

My exploration partner Jaime and his sister Teruca led the way, taking advantage that the Valdemorillo reservoir is exceptionally low due to maintenance work on the dam. After a nice walk we found the wall and a bridge!

The wall is impressive! Over 8ft tall (2,5 mts), 20 inches wide, and not a drop of cement to be seen for 32 miles!

This reminded me that I had driven past an excellently maintained part of the wall -and a gate- near our village since I was a kid! The wall has “dips” which back in the day would have sand ramps on the outside to allow animals to jump into the walled area. Once in, the animals could not escape, ergo more hunting game for the king.

At any rate, the wall nowadays about 50% gone, but some remaining bits are in excellent shape as you can see from the photos.

Colecciones Reales, musings on new museums

/ antonioyrocinante / 2 Comments

New museums are rare, most of the stuff worth seeing is already being shown. Another key issue is that for most modern museums the building is more interesting than what is inside -think of Guggenheim Bilbao, or even NY- It is rare to find a new museum where both the container and what it contains are both at the same level of excellence. One such exception is the massive collection of “stuff” the Spanish Royal family has -which technically belongs to all Spaniards, as it is part of the national heritage which is being shown in the brand new Colecciones Reales Museum in Madrid.

This museum has been pending since 1934 with the advent of the Second Republic, but it was finally constructed right above the Royal Palace gardens and next to the Cathedral. It opened in June of 2023. Celia and I finally got a chance to go, and it was free since the museum was celebrating the 10th anniversary of the crowning of King Felipe VI. I liked it so much, I returned the next day with my niece!

The museum is massive all in concrete and granite with some wooden accents, it is really cool. The collection has artifacts from the Trastámara dynasty, the Hapsburgs, and the Bourbons. The collection includes carriages and cars, a ton of tapestries, a fountain! some religious items, books, a set of Solomonic columns, dinning sets, and obviously a ton of paintings, including a huge Velazquez horse, and oh, a Caravaggio!

The museum includes the de rigueur coffee shop and gift shop, and it is worth the visit, even if it is not free when you go.