El Escorial Museums and the World's Largest Reliquary, Plus the Valley

Transport from Madrid and a guide for both monuments: the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, on the UNESCO list, and the Valley of the Fallen, now officially the Valle de Cuelgamuros, a few kilometres away in the same range of mountains.

What separates this tour inside El Escorial is how much of the building it walks. Not only the famous rooms: the monastery museums, the refectories, the corridors, the towers, the palace of the king and the apartments of the princesses, the royal tombs, and the basilica.

That basilica holds the largest reliquary collection in the world. Philip II spent decades acquiring relics for it, and the cases that hold them run around the walls of the church in a quantity that is difficult to process. It is the single strangest thing in the building, and most tours pass it without stopping.

At the Valley of the Fallen the visit goes inside the basilica cut into the rock, one of the largest churches anywhere, with the history explained on the spot.

The guide waits at the magazine kiosk on Gran Vía 71 with the Viajes Gran Vía logo. Arrive 15 minutes before the start.