The man-made terracing that surrounds the southern and eastern façades of the Royal Monastery contained the Friars’ Garden and the Gardens of the King and Queen. The viewing platform looks out over the lake, the market gardens of El Bosquecillo and La Herrería, with the peaks of Las Machotas as a backdrop.

Gardeners were summoned by Felipe II to plant squares of boxwood hedging with brightly coloured flowers, resembling “fine carpets brought from Damascus” planted within, although these have now been replaced with original hedge designs.

The neoclassical gardens of the House of the Prince are arranged on different levels, comprising a series of parterres of roses and conifers, framed by boxwood hedges and fruit trees, with original ornamentation in the form of pitchers and fountains.

The House of the Heir Apparent in El Escorial is fronted by gardens with avenues of boxwood hedges beginning at a fountain, along with majestic sequoias and conifers. The rear gardens feature a grid of fruit trees, rose bushes and conifers, an arch of cypresses, a small waterfall and a great golden mascaron from which the water to irrigate the garden flows into a lake.

The Princes’ and Queen’s House is located on the stone forecourt (or lonja) of the Monastery on its western side. It is the first great work of Juan de Villanueva in his professional career. The house was created to house the servants or families of Princes Gabriel, Antonio Pascual and Francisco Javier during the visits of His Majesty.

The house has a rectangular floor plan, with the longer side being five times the length of the shorter side, and was built on three levels: the lower-ground floor entrance, the ground floor and the main floor, in addition to the attics. The slope of the terrain meant that the main façade and the back façades were built at different heights. In his design, Villanueva chose to place the ground floor on the upper level, which could be entered directly from the so-called “long patio”.

In the principal façade which gives on to the lonja, the architectural style of the House of Trades and the Monastery is preserved, and shows a rhythm of continuity and openings, with Herrera-style decoration that stands out on the smooth stone surface. The fascia lines also alter its bareness, dividing the three levels, as does the simple cornice that separates it from the sloping roof.

In the back façade, which has only two floors due to the slope, Villanueva allowed himself greater license, expressed in the lack of similarity with the Monastery.

The death of Prince Francisco Javier caused the house to be divided between his two brothers. As Prince Antonio Pascual had no descendants, his half passed into the hands of the Crown, with the house since then acquiring the name of the Queen’s House. At the wish of Alfonso XIII, the other half was acquired by the Administration of the Crown in 1925 and, after remodelling, it was placed in a rental system for temporary and permanent residence.

The Company Quarters were designed by Francisco de Mora, architect, and disciple and follower of Juan de Herrera. The construction work was undertaken between 1590 and 1597, with the aim of housing in a single building all the warehousing, services and animals of the Hieronymite Community, the religious order entrusted with the care and maintenance of the Monastery.

The main building of the Company Quarters had a square floor plan with a square interior patio, and there was a first floor with fifteen arches per side on square columns and a second floor with large square windows over which the slate roofs were placed.

On the ground floor were the mill, the ovens, the refectory with kitchen, as well as cells for guests and friars of the mendicant orders. On the upper floor were the craftsman workshops and the infirmary. In the southern row of rooms, a large doorway of a Tuscan order was opened to allow carriages and livestock to pass. To its left was a one-floor building for the smithies and coach houses.

The main façade is the southern one, of Herreran style; it stands out due to its sober wall surface of granite masonry, interrupted by the embellishment of the openings, the fascia and the stonework cornice.

At the end of the 19th century, the buildings were in an abandoned state. This brought about their delivery in 1892 to the Order of Saint Augustine, the new community that took care of the Monastery, in order to establish in it the Royal College of Advanced Studies of El Escorial, known today as the Real Centro Universitario María Cristina (Maria Cristina Royal University) in honour of its protector, the reigning queen Maria Cristina of Hapsburg-Lorraine.

The declaration dated 3rd June 1931 classifying the Palace and Monastery of San Lorenzo as a Historical-Artistic Monument includes the Company Quarters among the attached buildings.

Currently, the Maria Cristina Royal University teaches courses in Law, Business Administration and Management and Chiropractics. In addition, it is one of the centres providing Summer Courses in San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

Although physically separate, the First and Second House of Trades make up an edifice conceived as a single unit. The concept for the houses arose out of the lack of space at the Monastery for housing all the palace quarters.

Designed by Juan de Herrera, and beyond the walls of the monastery, the work was directed by Herrera and later by Francisco de Mora between 1587 and 1596. Located between the low-level stone esplanades, or the lonja, and the high-level street currently known as Floridablanca, they were a satisfactory solution to the greatly different height levels of these two areas. As a result of this, their façades are of different heights, with three floors giving onto the lonja and two floors facing Floridablanca, leading to two different scales, one of continuous façades similar to the Monastery, and the other where this continuity is broken by three patios for each House, with arcades and square pillars.

In the 19th century the two Houses of Trades were functionally separated, initiating their use for different purposes, a separation that has continued to our time.

At present, the First House of Trades houses the Cultural Centre, the Manuel Andújar Municipal Library, an Exhibition Hall and the Local Tourist Information Office. In the Second House is found a chapel, what was the capilla de los labrantes (chapel of the labourers), now the Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Gracia, and it also holds the “Padre Antonio Soler” Music School, belonging to the Madrid regional government.

In the central courtyard of the First House of Offices stand two magnificent Spanish firs, while the left-hand courtyard viewed from Floridablanca boasts a beautiful Himalayan cedar.

A plaque was unveiled at the First House of Offices on World Forestry Day in 1998 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Higher Technical School of Forestry Engineers, at the site which housed the institution from 1871 to 1914.

The Second House of Offices also has a plaque marking where José Ortega y Gasset lived and wrote his first book, Meditations on Quixote, in 1914.