Wednesday, October 14, 2015 Royal Palaces, History & Armor

Following a nice hearty breakfast, we again roll over the few blocks to museum-land. Yesterday, Bloodroot’s much disparaged iPhone led us up and down numerous steep hills on the way to the Prado. But by today, Bear has already memorized our location. Using his brain, he cleverly maps our path to the Royal Palace. He directs us around the hill instead of over it, a much easier walk and push. Bloodroot, the pusher extraordinaire, follows in Keith’s wake, mumbling gratitude. Bear’s brain-mapping faculty amazes me, as I never know my whereabouts. My directional abilities, never stellar to begin with, have completely disappeared since I no longer drive. My current general response “Wow! We’re here” tends to elicit scorn. (Or occasionally envy, as in, “Wow, we’re in Europe. How did that happen?” Just kidding. No one could forget the lovely, endless flight.)

Left to his own devices, Bear would only visit art museums: perhaps, at times, a logical choice. I, on the other hand, want to vary our events and tours, so today we visit the Royal Palace. In his bible, Rick Steves calls the edifice before us one of the three best palaces in Europe. (His opinion: 1) Versailles-Paris, 2) Schönbrunn[ -Vienna, 3) Palacio Real-Madrid.) I have toured the first two; I now plan to complete my experience.

Renovated by the Bourbon dynasty following the War of Spanish Succession, this palace resembles Versailles but lacks the history and intrigue of Louis XIV’s palace. No Hall of Mirrors.  Quick history moment: In 1700, the inbred, crippled Charles II (aka the Bewitched), the last Spanish Habsburg, died childless, willing his kingdom to the French Bourbon Philip, Duke of Anjou, Louis XIV’s grandson. The other European powers, appalled and duly terrified at the prospect of a French-Spanish union, began the War of Spanish Succession. Thirteen years later, the war ended in compromise. The Bourbon Duke of Anjou ascended the Spanish throne as Philip V but renounced any claim to the crown of France, for both himself and his successors.

Back to the palace. We approach the palace ticket desk. As a cripple, I enter gratis, a beneficence unknown in the States. First, the grand staircase greets us: imposing, perhaps more so as naturally we can’t climb it. We head instead for the ascensor.

Exiting the lift, we embark on the unidirectional tour through a narrow, industrially carpeted, roped-off section of each room. We don’t move fast enough, allowing large tour groups to rush around us and trap us in boring spaces. We meander through lots of big square rooms, none architecturally striking. We see Tiepolo’s moralizing frescos on various ceilings, but as usual, we need the more detailed explanations. We understand one where Aeneas, a Greek soldier, instructs the guards on proper behavior in the guard room. Acquiescing, we accept our rudimentary education and give up on enlightenment promised by 18^th-century power philosophy disguised as moralizing lessons. Traveling onward, we enjoy the tapestries, designed by Raphael and woven in Belgium, and the Goya paintings. Some rooms have cool wallpaper; in others we find interesting furniture.

Our favorite room contains the royal collection of Stradivarius instruments: a cello, a violin-cello, and some violins. Previously, hearing these glorious instruments played required a personal invitation from the Queen Sofia. Bloodroot overhears a tour guide speaking in French. Through the tour guide (via Bloodroot’s translation), we learn that the performers now upload their gigs to YouTube so everyone can enjoy them.

Ok, I agree with boys. When we next visit Europe, we needn’t tour any more palaces. Keith will skip Schönbrunn should we ever visit  Vienna. (I found Schönbrunn  absolutely amazing but I was eighteen and obsessed with both Maria Teresa and the Austrian Habsburgs.) Bear growls that he wants to visit more palaces but tires of me dragging him into yet another fricking church.

But more importantly, am I outgrowing Rick Steves? We avoid his recommended hotels like the plague as they attract far too many Americans, people we can meet at home and needn’t travel to Europe to see. Some of the things Rick considers must-sees we could easily skip, like this palace.

Exiting, we find ourselves in a large square abutting the palace, La Plaza de la Armerίa. Bloodroot and I bask in the sun like lizards, while Bear, ever a bear, begins foraging. To the left of the palace, Bear discovers a museum full of armor, the Real Armerίa. Excitedly, he returns to the plaza to collect Bloodroot and me. We enter the museum, the royal armory, actually an oft-overlooked part of the Royal Palace. The boys love this place, having never seen so much armor. Will they begin dueling?

The museum includes the armor worn throughout the respective lifetimes of Carlos V, Felipe II, and Felipe III, much of it parade armor.  Royalty dressed their children in armor from the second they emerged from the cradle. The royalty wanted to prove they could produce living progeny, not an easy task given the infant mortality of the time and their extreme consanguinity. Viable offspring, aka living children (an heir and a spare), meant a stable succession, vitally important in these times. Otherwise, upon a royal’s death, the realm could descend into civil war, not healthy for anyone. As products of successful breeding, the children marched about, on display in parade armor showing off their individual royal elegance and bearing, reflecting their personal God-given divine mission to rule. Armor, never cheap, affirmed the king’s wealth, especially as he could afford armor to strut about in, not needed for the dirty work of fighting. As the court moved through the country on a royal progress, in every town, royalty had the opportunity to showcase their children swaggering about in armor. Owing to the era’s primitive sanitation, the court moved often, allowing servants to clean up the mess left behind.

We leave the royal palace and find a place to have lunch with €10 fixed-price plates. Wow! A good deal and good food! Unfortunately, we find this a rarity in Madrid. We enjoy a slow, leisurely lunch of delicious food and wine.

Sated and emboldened by our late lunch, we consider ourselves ready to visit another museum. “No more churches or palaces!” growls the Bear. 

Heading out for the next museum, Bear stops in a sweets store and buys a dark chocolate bar with hazelnut bark. Now happy compadres, we approach the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Museum located next to the Prado (known locally as the Thyssen), an acceptable animal selection. Entering and purchasing tickets, we face a dilemma. It’s 4PM and the museum closes at 7PM. Shall we see the Munch exhibit with many paintings borrowed from the Munch Museum in Oslo or tour the museum’s regular collection? (Somehow I’ve been to Oslo twice, but never toured the Munch museum. All people of Norwegian descent must visit Norway repeatedly, God said!) We choose Munch.

The guest exhibit of Edvard Munch, an artist unknown to me outside of his Scream painting, occupies an entire wing here. We go from room to room as Munch’s words explain the surrealistic ideas behind his paintings. With Munch’s art we explore archetypes of love, desire, jealousy, fear and death.

I have always believed that surrealism arose as a response a World War I, the war that did not end all wars, but simply set the stage for World War II. Responding to the futile, endless, ludicrous slaughter of WWI, artists began to look within. Yet the surrealistic Munch painted the feelings flowing from within his soul in the 1890s. Another of my cherished beliefs falls, victim to reality presented in European art museums.

Munch dwells on the changing roles and lives of women during his lifetime. He believed that the world changed irrevocably when women escaped the corset. As freed beings, women gained the upper hand, holding all the power men had always lacked. Munch once drew woman as the femme fragile, depicted in profile standing off to the side of a painting. Later his women boldly stare out at you, front and center on the canvas proudly embracing their seductive power as femmes fatales. They move from playing a supporting role to ruling all that they see. In other works we find women’s lives, graced at long last by self-actualization, still remain haunted by the all too human frailties of sorrow and death.

Munch explores his feelings on love. He embraces the scary free woman full of both Eros and Amor, painting glorious kisses, but also depicts her as a vampire.

Leaving Munch behind, we think about spending the next hour with the regular collection because the ticket vendor told us our tickets permitted multiple entry through the remainder of October. We approach the lifts accessing the permanent collection. “Au contraire!” says the fairly unpleasant ticket collector stationed at the entrance. She stamps our tickets, telling us we have an hour. We complain loudly and bitterly, our animal vocalizations upsetting the other museum patrons. “OK, OK already,” she concedes, un-stamping our tickets. Now thoroughly annoyed, she actually gets up off of her chair to shoo us away. “Come back another day!” she huffs.

Leaving the museum before being escorted out, we roll around the hill toward home. Back in the ‘hood we shop for dinner, again buying food to prepare, accompanied by some bread and wine. Arriving home, Bloodroot runs up the four flights of stairs, gathers Tinky and sends him down the elevator. I transfer from Bird to Tinky and ride the lift upstairs. Exiting, I send the ascensor back down. Keith folds Bird, loads her into the elevator, sending her also up four floors. He walks upstairs too. Animals and mobility devices reunited, we enter our flat and begin cooking.

The boys create a nice dinner of chicken and broccoli. We enjoy our wine and turn in for the night.