Believing that a country should be visited during its most "characteristic" season, the French writer Théophile Gautier visited Spain during the heat of summer in 1840, eventually publishing his account of the experience as *Un Voyage en Espagne* in 1845. He carried with him daguerreotype equipment and may have made this image himself. Constructed between 1563 and 1584 by the Spanish King Phillip II, the Escorial was an enormous palace twenty-five miles outside of Madrid. The softly modulated light that dominates the image makes this massive building appear to float in the sky.
