The Royal Palace, Monastery, and Mausoleum of El Escorial, which rears its gaunt, grey walls in one of the bleakest but most imposing districts in the whole of Spain, was erected to commemorate a victory over the French in 1557. It was occupied and pillaged by the French two and a-half centuries later, and twice it has been greatly diminished by fire; but it remains to-day, not only the incarnate expression of the fanatic religious character and political genius of Philip II., but the greatest mass of wrought granite which exists on earth, the leviathan of architecture, the eighth wonder of the world.
In the text of this book the author has endeavoured to reconstitute the glories and tragedies of the living past of the Escorial, and to represent the wonders of the stupendous edifice by reproductions of over two hundred and seventy of the finest photographs and pictures obtainable. Both as a review and a pictorial record it is hoped that the work will make a wide appeal among all who are interested in the history, the architecture, and the art of Spain.
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
CORDOVA
A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE ANCIENT CITY WHICH THE CARTHAGINIANS STYLED THE “GEM OF THE SOUTH,” WITH OVER 155 ILLUSTRATIONS
Gay-looking, vivacious in its beauty, silent, ill-provided, depopulated, Cordova was once the pearl of the West, the city of cities, Cordova of the thirty suburbs and three thousand mosques; to-day she is no more than an overgrown village, but she still remains the most Oriental town in Spain.
Cordova, once the centre of European civilisation, under the Moors the Athens of the West, the successful rival of Baghdad and Damascus, the seat of learning and the repository of the arts, is now no more than a third-rate provincial town; but the artist, the antiquary and the lover of the beautiful, will still find in its streets and squares and patios a mysterious spell that cannot be resisted.
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
SEVILLE
A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT, WITH 300 ILLUSTRATIONS