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Published: November 2nd 2015
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I am pretty sure that I have not improved as a photographer so it must be that my camera is getting better with age. Case in point, I took some pictures of the north facade of the Palacio Real last night and I was stunned by how well they turned out. The monochrome is quite dramatic! I include Susan's favorite of the ones I took.
Given the success of the indoor and outdoor pics I took yesterday, I was looking forward to dazzling you with further gems today. I figured that since the Cerralbo and the Thyssen both allowed non-flash shots (and both are national museums) that I would be able to get more at the sights we would see today.
Nope. You can take your camera in but you can't take pictures in either the palace or the Prado. Hmph.
Well, you can take pictures out in the "public" areas of both but not of the treasures within.
Before today, we had tried four times to get into the palace and were balked either by closures or really long lines. As we were both up and moving, however sluggishly, by 815, we decided to try getting
to the palace before it opened to see if we could make it to the head of the line. Yup, that worked. Just as well because it was raining. We were dressed for it but there was enough wind that indoors looked better than outdoors.
We get our tickets and go to shove our outdoor stuff into a locker. As every building we have been in so far has been overheated, I toss in my jacket. Sure enough the cafeteria (did I mention we were in such a rush we didn't have coffee before going?) was overheated. Aha, says I, that was a smart move on your part, McRory.
Then I find out that we have to go outside to get into the palace proper. I guess we were in the working annex. At least it is not raining as we cross the vast cobblestoned courtyard.
I did manage to get some shots of the view from the palace over western Madrid - largely the old hunting preserve of the Casa de Campo. Not a bad vista to wake up to.
Then we got to the main staircase from the portico where the carriages used to
draw up. The grand entrance is pretty cool and I was allowed to take pics. Man, this place had great ceilings in every room. I think I hurt my neck gawking at them like a rube staring up at the skyscrapers. I had to fight off the impulse to shout "Golly! Lookee there, Ma!" many times.
It even this area is exposed to the fresh damp breeze. Large portions of the tour took us into unseated stone corridors and then into inside rooms again.
Smart idea, getting rid of the jacket, no?
No.
The interiors were actually jaw-droppingly spectacular and I did wrestle with my inner hillbilly a lot. Sometimes I lost! I could see a major coffee table book just about the ceilings. The most incredible was the Chinoiserie ceiling in the king's dressing room ("room"? Think high school gymnasium!) which was done in such high relief that the characters seemed to be growing out of the ceiling and hanging precariously overhead.
Susan like two rooms especially: one in neoclassical navy blue and gold and one done in what she tells me is Bourbon (monarchy, not booze, you philistines) blue, a deep rich purplish
blue about which she had heard but never seen before.
I was most impressed with and also amused by the hall of the Ambassadors, the throne room where the Monarchs recieve the ambassadors. It is a long, rectangular room and I thought the royals would want to be seated at the far end so ambassadors would have to walk the full length with the Monarchs staring down at them. I thought that would be intimidating.
Oh, I am such an amateur at this stuff. The king's seat is in the middle of the east wall on a dais surounded by four statues of snarling lions. Over him rears a giant canopy in, of course, red silk bearing the arms of Spain. He looks over the crowd and out the windows to the view of the west. The ambassador, after a suitable wait in a rather small room, would enter at the south door And approach from the king's left. Their view of the king would be partly obstructed and their path to him would require them to go around the lions even if they were allowed so direct an approach.
Instead they would have to walk with
their right sides closest to the king before being allowed to turn and face him. This would allow the king to ignore them for quite a while. In fact, depending on where he p,aced his advisors, I would imagine he could keep the ambassadors waiting for quite a while before acknowledging them, depending on the level of intimidation he wanted to achieve!
The entire ceiling is painted with symbols of the glories of the Spanish empire, subject people's holding up their treasures and gazing down in tribute to the importance of the empire. Except directly opposite the royal seat. There, God the father sits. Well, of course, since that would place Him in a superior position even to the royals, who could gaze up at Heaven for inspiration.
Except that God has been painted, a faintly contemptuous frown on his face, an accusatory finger pointing off to the side, aimed right at the doorway where the ambassadors enter. I guess the Sparish monarchy thought the least God could do is go to work for them.
Just looked at my watch and realized I've been tapping away at this for over an hour, what with getting pics sent over and all and I am getting tired.
Return journey to cloakroom through the driving rain. Grab cab to Prado. Into Prado. Huge crowds, old Masters paintings, rank upon rank of them. No pictures.
On the way out, back to the cloak room to get our stuff. Didn't realise that you were required go through security scanner to get into the line in the cloakroom area, a large open space. Oh, you can into the area easily enough but you cannot get into the LINE to get your stuff. And if you have walked into the cloakroom are without going through the outgoing security scanner, you are deemed to have left the museum proper. Trying to get into the line anyway will get you lectured, inSpanish, by security guards and little old ladies in line. Trying to go back into the museum will get you lectured by the security guys.
So we had to renter the museum by security, then pivot immediately right and go through the adjacent scanner, to get out and into the line to get our clothes back.
No signage to indicate this procedure. Who needs signs when everybody else around you is willing to explain, after the fact, what you were so clearly doing wrong?
Wish I had taken pictures anyway. That'd show them!
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