Crisis in the Royal Rotting Room

There is a looming royal crisis in Spain, for which there are—at least at this writing—no present solutions currently being offered.  They are running out of space in the Royal Rotting Room—or at least the crypts connected to them.  It is tough to be the king (or, more strictly speaking, the king’s corpse).

 

This crisis started in the sixteenth century, when King Philip II was really messed up on the idea of death and dying.  A royal obsession with funeral monuments is fairly common among royalty and compared to the builders of the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Taj Mahal, Philip still had a peculiar obsession with death.  Just look at the Escorial, or as it is properly called, the Royal Site of San Lorenzo de El Escorial.

 

Philip II built the royal complex of the Escorial as a combination castle, library, museum, monastery, hospital, school, and university.  All of which are built on top of a strange pantheon containing the dried, desiccated bones of the royal dead of the last five centuries.  The king meant for the edifice to stand as his own personal proof of the grandeur of God, of Spain, and of his royal family, the Hapsburgs (though probably not in that order). 

 

Yes, Philip was a little hung up on death, as evidenced by his designing the major building to resemble the medieval rack that was used to execute Saint Lawrence.  As far as I can tell, this is unique among royal buildings.

 

Under the Basilica, Philip created two large pantheons to serve as places of burial for his parents, and the future remains of the royal family of Spain.  There are two crypts—The Hall of Kings (for the remains of the deceased Kings and Queens of Spain) and the Hall of Princes (for musicians obsessed with the color purple).  The Hapsburg line ended with King Charles II in 1700, and since then, the crypts have contained the remains of the currently reigning Bourbon family. 

 

Philip, or Felipe II, was really serious about this project.  He had his father, Charles V disinterred along with all of his wives, and reinterred here.  He included all of his sisters with the sole exception of Mary Tudor of England, who is buried at Westminster Abbey in London.

 

This macabre family reunion had a few bizarre moments.  Don John of Austria, Philip’s half-brother who was the illegitimate son of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, had died in the Netherlands in 1578.  Hated by the Dutch, his body could have been used as a bargaining chip by Spain’s enemies, so to keep it safe…. Don John’s body was dismembered and the pieces were carefully sewn into the leather saddle bags of multiple riders who separately made their way to Spain.  If the King’s enemies had come into the possession of a single bag—say an elbow—this wouldn’t have been considered much of a bargaining chip.

 

Luckily, for Don John and Philip’s strange obsession, all of the riders reached safety with their cargo and the body was reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle, with all of the pieces carefully sewn back together.

 

The crypt does not actually contain the bodies of the royal deceased, since the beautiful gold chambers in the crypt are a little on the small side—they contain the desiccated, rotted remains of the deceased.  When it comes to the tiny little chambers, one size fits all, so each deceased has to keep on rotting until it fits into the appropriate little space...kind of the way your carryon suitcase has to fit into the little wooden box before you can board your flight.

 

After death, the bodies are placed inside coffins and placed in El Pudridero, more colloquially known as the Royal Rotting Room.  Actually, there are two such rooms—one for Kings and Queens and one for Princes.  The process takes between 30 and 50 years to complete—the time probably depending on the body mass of the deceased—till the bones are removed from the coffins and placed inside marble urns that fit inside the golden chambers in the appropriate pantheon.

 

Obviously, there are no tours of the Rotting Rooms—only special monks can enter (perhaps the ones with no sense of smell?).  As far as is known, the picture at right is the only photo ever released of the rotting room.

In the case of Don John, this means that he died and was buried in the Netherlands, then he was dug up and dismembered.  The various pieces of his body made their way independently across France to Spain, where the body was sewn back together and placed inside a coffin in the Rotting Room.  After a few decades, the decayed remains were placed in an urn and secured in a golden crypt, where several times a day tourists can view his “resting” place.

Although there are currently only two occupants in the Rotting Room—the grandparents of current King Felipe VI (who each have a few more decades to wait before they move into the pantheon)—there is a problem:  When Philip II had the pantheons created, he built in 25 chambers in the Hall of Kings and left little room for additions.  While there is plenty of room remaining in the Rotting Room, there are only two empty chambers left in that Pantheon, and no room to create more.

 

Still living, and lacking confirmed reservations in the crypt, are the recently retired King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia and the current King Felipe and Queen Letizia.  Since the retired monarchs are both octogenarians, a solution will have to be found sometime in the next fifty or so years.

 

In view of the fact that only 37 of the 60 niches in the Hall of Princes are occupied, I suppose that a few kings and queens could be persuaded to move in with the princes in the other pantheon.