Escorial, or Escurial (Span., 'mining rubbish, of. scoriœ), an immense royal palace, mausoleum, and monastery of Spain, 31 miles NW. of Madrid, on the south-eastern slope of the Sierra Guadarrama, at an altitude of 3700 feet. Of dark-gray granite, stern and forbidding of aspect, it was built by Philip II. in 1563-84, partly to provide a royal burying-place for the kings of Spain, partly to commemorate his victory over the French at St Quentin on St Lawrence's day, 10th August 1557. Its general shape is that of a quadrangular parallelogram, 706 feet long by 550 broad, with a smaller square projecting from the east side, in shape thus somewhat resembling St Lawrence's gridiron. At each corner rises a tower 200 feet high; and in the centre a cupola 312 feet. The library, once one of the richest in Europe, still contains over 32,000 vols, and 4500 valuable MSS., including 1900 written in Arabic. In the palace the most interesting apartment is the cell of Philip II., in which he spent his last days. The Escorial was for the second time greatly injured by fire in 1872.