Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales

This guide to the Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales in Madrid follows Joanna of Austria, who governed Spain as regent in the late 1550s while her brother Philip the Second was away, all while secretly living under a man's false name within a strictly male religious order. It traces her path from a Habsburg birth in the palace that once stood on this spot, through a young widowhood that forced her to leave an infant son behind, to the 1559 founding of this convent for noblewomen seeking an escape of their own. Climb the grand staircase ahead, painted with royal portraits meant to remind every visitor whose family this was.