The Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso is one of the residences of the Spanish Royal family and is located in the Segovian town of Real Sitio de San Ildefonso.

The Real Sitio de La Granja is located on the northern slope of the Sierra de Guadarrama, 13 kilometers from Segovia, and about 80 kilometers from Madrid.

Its name comes from an old farm that the Hieronymite monks of the El Parral monastery had in the vicinity.

In 1719 King Felipe V ordered the construction of a chapel in its surroundings, "without demolishing anything of the old," which explains, according to Eugenio de Llaguno in his News of the architects and architecture of Spain since its Restoration, published thirty years after his death by Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez in 1829, "his irregularity" and the fact that he is "a set of additions".

The northern slope of the Sierra de Guadarrama was during the Middle Ages a hunting ground reserved for the kings of Castile, who frequented it given its hunting wealth and its proximity to the city of Segovia.

According to chronicles of the time, the first royal hunt for hunters (known as Casa del Bosque) was ordered to be built by King Enrique III in the town of Valsaín, King Enrique IV built a hostel and a small hermitage dedicated to Archbishop San Ildefonso.

In 1477 the Catholic Monarchs donated the hermitage and the lodge with extensions of land to the congregation of the Hieronymite monks of the Parral Monastery in Segovia.

These monks made small reforms and moved in the summer months when the fresh air of the Sierra was more pleasant than in Segovia. This farm, a place of meditation and recreation for the monks of Parral, was the origin of the town and it took its name from it.

King Felipe II carried out the last reform and turned the building into a sumptuous palace that served as a residence for his successors until Carlos II, at which time a great fire destroyed the western part in 1682.