page_title: El Escorial
section_title: Library
hierarchical_section_title: El Escorial / Sections of the building / Library
caption_attribution_description: Español: Biblioteca del monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, (España).
context_page_description: The Royal Site of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, commonly known as Monasterio del Escorial, is a historical residence of the King of Spain, in the town of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, about 45 kilometres northwest of the Spanish capital, Madrid. It is one of the Spanish royal sites and functions as a monastery, basilica, royal palace, pantheon, library, museum, university, school and hospital. It is situated 2.06 km up the valley from the town of El Escorial.
  El Escorial comprises two architectural complexes of great historical and cultural significance: the royal monastery itself and La Granjilla de La Fresneda, a royal hunting lodge and monastic retreat about five kilometres away. These sites have a dual nature; that is to say, during the 16th and 17th centuries, they were places in which the power of the Spanish monarchy and the ecclesiastical predominance of the Roman Catholic religion in Spain found a common architectural manifestation. El Escorial was, at once, a monastery and a Spanish royal palace. Originally a property of the Hieronymite monks, it has become a monastery of the Order of Saint Augustine. It was also a boarding school.
context_section_description: The Escorial has three libraries inside, not just one. 
  One is located behind the Chorus of the basilica. Another, within the monastery itself, used to be distributed in the different cells and rooms of the monks and that the Augustine monks have gradually managed to turn into their own. Finally, the Royal one, which is public in everything, from its design to its special bull of protection.
  From the beginning, the Royal Library was meant to be a monumental work of art, and its execution was commissioned to the most prominent architects of the moment: Juan de Toledo and Juan de Herrera. It constituted, along with the basilica, the heart of the entire project and the whole exterior and distribution of the project was redrafted several times to accommodate changes in the organization of the library itself. As it was usual for Juan de Herrera's work, it was the most advanced of its kind in Europe. It was the first library on the continent that broke with medieval design. Domenico Fontana was inspired by, if not copied, Herrera's design after a visit and used it for the Vatican's Library.
  The Library, like everything else in El Escorial, forms part of a larger symbolic structure and has symbolic meaning functioning within it. It links the convent and the seminary on the principle axis of the building, symbolizing the union of the spiritual and physical world. The books of the most "profane" subjects, such as History, Geography or Botanics, are located in the part closest to the entrance, and as the corridors advance towards the basilica the subjects turn into more abstract forms of themselves like Poetry, Grammar or Mathematics. The corridors of the library branch out in different sections just to re-converge in the end. The subjects closest to the basilica are those the King conceived as being the most abstract distillation of the others, and the closest to the origin, which was God in the Basilica: theology, geometry, and mathematics. The visitor must leave the noisy world behind and walk through the halls of knowledge in a specific, comprehensible order from concreteness to abstraction before being able to reach God and understand His message, a notion quite in line with both Charles I and Philip II's hermeticist view of religion.
  Currently the Library  has more than 40,000 volumes, located in a great hall fifty-four metres in length, nine metres wide and ten metres tall with marble floors and beautifully carved wood shelves. De Herrera and Italian construction engineer Giussep Flecha y Gamboa were careful to consider the security of the library's holdings in armarios (large bookcases) as well as their display, safeguards against fire hazards, and natural lighting. This Library was a Renaissance statement of power, majesty, prowess, and intellectual world leadership designed for both the preservation of the old (binding multiple cultural histories into a single Catholic Spanish culture) and discovery of the new (imprinted by that culture).
  The vault of the library's ceiling is decorated with frescoes depicting the seven liberal arts: Rhetoric, Dialectic, Music, Grammar, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy. Unlike most libraries of its time, the bookcases are placed against the walls, rather than perpendicular to them. This arrangement of parallel book cases was initiated by Philip II and was called the "wall system".
caption: The library of El Escorial.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Make": "OLYMPUS OPTICAL CO.,LTD", "Image Model": "C5050Z", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2010:02:17 00:39:23", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 20, 0, 1, 0, 20, 0, ... ]", "Image ExifOffset": "532", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1270", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9213", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/40", "EXIF FNumber": "9/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2003:07:26 12:06:01", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2003:07:26 12:06:01", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "17/10", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "71/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1976", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1461", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1144", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "High gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}