Royal Palaces of Spain

by Albert Frederick Calvert

East of the Patio de las Muñecas, and occupying the north side of the Patio de las Doncellas, is the long room called the Dormitorio de los Reyes Moros. All the apartments in the Alcazar are fancifully named, but the designation of none is quite so stupid and misleading as this. The columns of the twin windows on either side of the door appear to date from the time of the Khalifate. The doors themselves are richly inlaid and painted with geometrical patterns. The three horseshoe arches leading to the al hami, or alcove, also seem to belong to the early period of Spanish-Arabic art. The room is so richly decorated that scarce a handbreadth of the surface is free from ornament.

On the opposite side of the central court is the sumptuous Salon de Carlos V., the ceiling of which was constructed by order of the emperor, and is adorned with classical heads. The tile and stucco work is the finest in the palace. There is a legend to the effect that St. Ferdinand died in this room—on his knees, with a cord round his neck and a taper in his hand—but it is unlikely that this part of the palace existed in his time. The guide pointed out the room to the west of this salon as the chamber of Maria de Padilla, but this again is, to put it mildly, doubtful.

The upper chambers of the Alcazar, which are not accessible to the general public, are very handsome. The floor overlooking the Patio del Leon is occupied by the Sala del Principe, with its beautiful spring windows, polychrome tiling, and columns brought from the old Moorish Palace at Valencia. Adjacent is the Oratory, built by order of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1504. The tile work is of extraordinary beauty, and shows that the Moors had not a monopoly of talent in this kind of decoration. The fine Visitation over the altar is signed by Francesco Nicoloso the Italian. On the same floor is the reputed bed-chamber of Don Pedro. Over the door may be seen four death’s-heads, and over another entrance the curious figure of a man who looks back over his shoulder at a grinning skull. These gruesome designs commemorate the summary execution by the king of four judges whom he overheard discussing the division of a bribe. The royal apartments on this floor contain some precious works of art; but I abstain from mentioning the most remarkable of these, as pictures are so often transferred in Spain from one royal residence to another that such indications are often out of date before they are printed.

The gardens are really the most pleasing spot within the Alcazares. They form a delicious pleasaunce, where the orange and citron diffuse their fragrance, and magic fountains spring up suddenly beneath the passenger’s feet, sprinkling him with a cooling dew. I noticed some flower beds shaped like curiously formed crosses, which the gardener told me were the crosses of the orders of Calatrava, Santiago, Alcantara, and Montesa. You are also shown the baths of Maria de Padilla, which are approached through a gloomy arched entrance. In the favourite’s time they had no other roof than the sky, and no further protection from prying eyes than that afforded by a screen of orange and lemon trees. In Mohammedan times the baths were probably used by the ladies of the harem.

The Alcazar, I think, disappoints most foreigners. The architectural and decorative work of the Spanish Moors and their descendants pleases people quite inexperienced in the arts by its mere prettiness, its brilliance, its originality, and its colour; and it delights still more those who are able to appreciate its marvellous combinations of geometrical forms, its exquisite epigraphy, and all its subtle details. But the average traveller stands between these two classes of observers. He looks for grandeur where he should expect only beauty, and his eye is wearied by the wealth of conventional ornamentation. What I think is conspicuously lacking in the Alcazar, and to a much less extent in the Alhambra, is atmosphere. Memories do not haunt you in these gilded halls. There is nothing about them to suggest that anything ever happened here. The legends tell us the contrary; but assuredly no one was ever less successful in impressing his personality on his abode than were the founders and inhabitants of the Alcazar.

VII
ROYAL PALACE
MADRID

The Palacio Real, which towers high above the ‘most noble, loyal, imperial, crowned and heroic city’ of Madrid, dominating the bleak table-land, and reflecting in the rays of southern sunshine the gleaming whiteness of the distant, snow-capped Guadarramas, occupies a site which has been royal since the eleventh century. In 1466 an earthquake partially destroyed the Moorish Alcazar, and on the ruins Henry IV. constructed a palace of mediæval splendour, which was enlarged by Charles V., embellished by Philip II. and completed by Philip III., who added a façade—the joint work of Toledos, Herrera, Moras, Luis and Gaspar de Vega—which was acclaimed as a masterpiece of architecture. In the time of Philip II., the palace is described as having five hundred rooms. On the ground-floor was the grand reception-room, an apartment 170 feet long, in which the ten state councillors held their meetings. Behind the tapestry hangings the walls were lined with marble, and guards were stationed at the outer and inner portals. There was a theatre in the building, in which some of the great comedies of Philip’s reign were first produced, and in an adjoining saloon was held, in 1622, the famous Poetic Tournament of which Lope de Vega has left us such a sprightly account. The rooms were hung with the richest Flemish tapestries, the picture gallery was filled with priceless works of art, and the treasury of the king’s, the Guarda Joyas—that store of untold gold and silver, of jewels and precious stones—was contained in a carefully guarded suite of apartments. Gil Gonzalez Davila in his Teatro de las Grandezas de Madrid tells us that included in the royal treasure were a diamond valued at 200,000 ducats, a pearl as large as a nut—which is impressive but indefinite—called La Huerfana (the Orphan), because of its unique size, and a golden lily, which was recovered from the French by Charles V., who made its return a condition in the agreement by which they obtained the deliverance of Francis I. A maze of subterranean passages was constructed beneath the old palace, some of which exist beneath the present building.

On Christmas night, 1734, the Royal Palace of the Alcazar was on fire, and the building and all its treasures were utterly destroyed. This disaster afforded Philip V. the opportunity to display his powers as a master builder. He had already created the Palace of San Ildefonso at La Granja, he had rebuilt the palace at Aranjuez, he had tinkered at the Alcazar at Seville. Now he would create a marble monument that should surpass the magnitude and magnificence of Philip the Second’s Escorial and outstrip in splendour the Versailles palace of Louis XIV. Such a work was beyond the art of the followers of Churriguera: he sent to the Court of Turin for the Abbé Felipe de Juvara, the Sicilian, and confided to him the scheme of the palace that he would raise on the heights of San Bernardino. It was to be a square edifice of the composite order, having four façades, each 1700 feet long, it was to contain twenty-three courts, approached by thirty-four entrances from the exterior, and be completed with gardens, churches, public offices, and a theatre. It was to be a collection of palaces under one roof, and the colossal model of the building, which is preserved in the Galeria Topografica of the Madrid Museum, conveys some idea of the marvel of architecture which the king and his designer had conceived between them. But the palace on the San Bernardino hill was never begun. The ruling ambition of the masterful Elizabeth Farnese was to advance the interests of her children, and she begrudged the expense which the colossal building would entail. She raised so many difficulties and delayed so long the adoption of the plans that Juvara died of hope deferred, and Giovanoni Battista Saccheti came from Turin to carry on the work. The queen by this time had exhausted Philip’s resistance to her will, and Sacchetti’s less pretentious design, traced among the still smouldering ruins of the ancient Alcazar, was adopted on 7th April 1737.

A year later the first stone of the present palace was laid. The foundation-stone bore a commemorative description and enclosed a leaden casket, containing gold, silver, and copper coins from the mints of Madrid, Seville, Mexico, and Peru. The work of ensuring the solidity of the foundations by moulding them into the western slope of the hill cost an enormous sum of money, entailed an immense amount of labour, and occupied a proportionately extensive period of time. In 1808 the palace had cost 75,000,000 pesetas, and the subsequent alterations, which included the enclosing of the Campo del Moro with a wall and gilded railing, brought up the sum total to the enormous sum of over 100,000,000 pesetas. Philip died in 1746, long before the palace he had projected was near completion. The work went on through the thirteen years’ reign of Philip VI., and when Charles III. came to Madrid in 1759 he recognised that unless the rate of progress was accelerated he would have to occupy the building at the Buen Retiro for the rest of his life. Under his resolute authority the work was pushed on with more vigour, and it was ready for his occupation on 1st December 1764. It had taken over a quarter of a century to build, it had cost Spain three millions sterling, but it gained the place that Philip V. anticipated for it among the palaces of the world.

It has been said, and the statement is but slightly exaggerated, that our own Buckingham Palace looks shabby and insignificant beside this vast pile of shimmering, white masonry, this truly royal residence, this unique museum, which contains every variety of art treasures. The architecture selected is the unpoetical but imposing style of the late Renaissance, and the regularity of the exterior is redeemed from monotony by Ionic columns, pilasters, and balconies. The massive building, 500 feet square and 100 feet in height, forms a huge quadrangle, enclosing a court, while two projecting wings form the Plaza de Armas. The base of the building, which is composed of three stories above the ground-floor, is of granite, and the upper portion is of the beautiful white stone of Colmenar, which gleams like marble. The lower portion is plain, massive, and severe, and the appearance of the third story is marred by the square port-holes of the entre-súelos. A wide cornice runs round the top, and above it a stone balustrade, on the pedestals of which stand rococo vases. In accordance with the first plans of the palace, the whole of this balustrade was surmounted by statues, but these were removed on account of their great weight, and are now scattered all over Madrid.