Buckingham Palace in London is a royal residence and the administrative headquarters of the King of the United Kingdom, and the monarchy. It is located in Westminster and used to host state occasions and official celebrations by the royal family.
It was initially setup as a country retreat and named Buckingham House, after the Duke of Buckingham. It was purchased by George III in 1761 as a residence for Queen Charlotte and became known as the Queen’s House. Later, it was expanded to include three additional wings and an inside courtyard. Then renamed to Buckingham Palace when it became the royal residence of Queen Victoria in 1837. The most recent additions include the east front balcony.
The Buckingham Palace Garden is the largest private garden anywhere in London.
The palace itself has 775 rooms, and one can visit the official State Rooms when they are open to the public (usually only in August and September, and for a few days in the winter and spring). Tours sell out well in advance so do plan and book early.
Our visit of Buckingham Palace
With only a couple of nights in London we opted to do both the Tower of London and Buckingham Palace the same day. While doable, this is pretty intense! Be sure to have good shoes and to be well organized.
We took a black cab from the tower to the entrance of St James’s Park so that we could walk through the beautiful gardens and approach Buckingham Palace near the Canada Gate. What better place to enter for us Canadians!
East Wing Highlight Tour
Our pre-booked East Wing guided tour met up at the North Center Gate, which is just across the street from the Canada Gate. Hard to miss, and it was clearly outlined in the email they sent us confirming our pre-purchased tour. That said, we did have a couple of guests that missed the tour so be sure to get to the right spot in time.
There are no pictures allowed inside the palace, and no backpacks can be carried on one’s back. You can leave a small knapsack (checked and scanned by security) in a small room or carry it around with you. We had three attendants accompanying our group of 18. Twenty is the maximum group size for the private tours. They were watching like hawks and rightfully so as a couple of the young kids got their nose prints on the windows and fiddled with the antique curtains we had all been warned to stay away from.
The East Wing highlights tour showcases the newly renovated and restored (in 2024) East Wing which is the first to reopen after extensive renovation work. The rooms are filled with family portraits and exquisite furniture, many with chinoiseries or Chinese and other oriental-themed pieces. The tour was expertly narrated by one of the senior staff members who really knew a lot about the rooms and all the beautiful treasures within them.
It was really more like a museum. We think it was well worth the cost and time to get a rare glimpse into these wonderfully restored rooms in the East Wing.
We loved the large ceramic birds and the chandeliers that we heard had been brought from Brighton when that royal residence had been sold off. There were some standing gold trim palm trees that had been converted into curtain rods. A rare glimpse into the creativity of the royal family. We were told that the King himself had played a hands-on role in some of the restorations. Very cool.
We also loved learning about how the royals had often embellished the things they had bought, sometimes adding gold trim or extending pieces by adding decorative bases that had to be custom-made to match. This was all to ensure that the appropriate proportions could be had for the room in which they were to be displayed. In some cases, exact replicas of pieces were made in order to have two identical items to display in a balanced fashion. We were told that even today the curators of the collection cannot tell which pieces are original versus the replicas.
The tour lasted about an hour after which we were led to the State Rooms entrance to start our self-guided tour for which we could obtain an audio guide.
State Apartments self-guided tour
After the small group East Wing guided tour, we were walked across the inner courtyard of the palace to the main entry point of Buckingham Palace’s State Apartments self-guided tour.
We got the audio guide (included) which was well done and helped to narrate the rooms. Then we were released into the crowd from our small group private tour joining a river of tourists that were going through the normal exhibition at the palace.
Paintings and portraits were displayed in various rooms which were in themselves works of art adorned with amazing workmanship from floor to ceiling.
It took us about an hour to go through the 15 or so exhibits but one could easily spend hours more reading and admiring each painting or each of the wonderful pieces in the rooms. It is truly a remarkable collection.
The audio guide also described the uses of the various rooms over the years and the events that had taken place in them. The history that spanned hundreds of years was fascinating to listen to.
While it’s a shame that no pictures are allowed, Buckingham Palace is still a working palace and as with many such residences there is a strict no pictures policy.
As we ended the tour, our feet were sore, and our watches showed we had done over 20 km and over 25,000 steps. We certainly deserved a royal tart at the concession before the entry into the garden. At £12 (over $16) we thought it would be bigger or should be accompanied by a royal salute but alas it hit the spot and gave us a bit of energy to walk through the garden to complete the tour.
Tips for visiting Buckingham Palace:
- Book well in advance
- Take the East Wing tour
- Plan for some time in the garden
- No backpacks if you can avoid it (or a really small one)
You get let out at the far end or opposite side of the entry point. For us that was an extra km or so from the hotel which our feet were not looking forward to, but we stopped at a local pub for an early dinner to finish off a nice tour of London and Scotland for our anniversary.