Royal Palaces of Spain

THE SPANISH SERIES ROYAL PALACES OF SPAIN

THE SPANISH SERIES EDITED BY ALBERT F. CALVERT

A HISTORICAL & DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE SEVEN PRIN- CIPAL PALACES OF THE SPANISH KINGS, WITH 164 ILLUSTRA- TIONS. BY ALBERT F. CALVERT
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMIX


Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty
Since despotism has been replaced by constitutional rule the divinity that doth hedge a King has shed something of its significance, but the staunchest republican will admit that there is at least a certain picturesqueness about royalty; and the interest attaching to a crowned head naturally extends to the ancestral homes of majesty. Spain is unusually rich in ‘cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces,’ many of which have been the scenes of stirring and momentous events in her history. On the gloomy pile of the Escorial—worthier of an Egyptian Pharaoh—Philip II. stamped conspicuously and indelibly his own sombre personality; Aranjuez and La Granja reveal to us monarchy in its lighter aspect; the Alcazar reminds us of the days when Castilian royalty aped the pomp of the Saracen and became itself half-Oriental; the Royal Palace of Madrid epitomises the greatest crisis in the nation’s history, of the expulsion of its legitimate sovereign, and of the usurpation of the eldest Buonaparte. Napoleon himself ascended its grand staircase, and looking round at the splendid home of the Spanish Bourbons, he was able to say to his brother, ‘I hold at last this Spain so much desired!’