Testament to Spain’s golden age to open up its secret spaces after €6m revamp

Unesco-listed San Lorenzo de El Escorial was fulfilment of Philip II's dream of raising monastery in a desert'

Despite perching imperiously on a mountainside near Madrid for the better part of five centuries, the royal monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial has yet to give up all its treasures - or all its secrets.

Forty years after it was included on Unesco's World Heritage list, Philip II's austere monument to power, piety and patronage is undergoing a major reorganisation that will allow visitors to enjoy the peace of a previously off-limits monastic patio and to look at paintings once reserved for the royal gaze.