Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales, Madrid

Only few people at a time. Guided spanish tour. Very interesting place with lots of valuable paintings and statues. You are not allowed to take photos.

This is a very beautiful and well kept working monastery (there are 19 nuns there currently). The frescoes, art, furnishings, and the structure itself are beautiful and in excellent condition for their age. All tours here are done by in-house guides (monastery employees) only and in Spanish. The staff is crude and extremely unpleasant at times. Photography and video recording are prohibited here, and in our tour they had an employee with the grace and good humor of a wild bore who tailed the group reprimanding people for just looking at their phones. One visitor in our group got yelled at for trying to silence here phone. If you had your phone in your hand, you were watched like a criminal, so we put ours in our pockets. A lady with limited mobility sat on a bench and was rudely told to stand up and get off the bench. There is security check at the door and we had to put not only our backpack through the X-ray machine, but our phones and the coins I had in my pocket as well. Beyond ridiculous! I get the backpack, but phones and coins??? Our tour guide, who had a nice voice and was very eloquent, was a bit scattered at times making it hard to follow the tour. Our tour lasted one hour and the tickets only cost €6.00 a piece, so very affordable. Visiting this place takes a bit of planing as tickets are usually sold out a week in advance. This place is not suitable for people with limited mobility as there are some stairs to climb. For us this visit was a bit uncomfortable and unpleasant due to the staff’s crude behavior, so we cannot recommend this place to any one.