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.
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.