Description
Kensington Palace is the brick royal palace inside Kensington Gardens, in west London: where Queen Victoria was born and grew up and Princess Diana made her London home, with state rooms open to visitors and wings still lived in by members of the royal family.
It is a gentler palace than Buckingham: a country house that grew around a courtyard, with lawns and gardens running straight into the park.
Inside, the King's State Apartments start with the King's Staircase, where William Kent painted 45 courtiers of George I's court, among them two Turkish servants, Peter "the wild boy", and Kent himself.
Beyond it, the Cupola Room, Kent's first work here, is the most splendidly decorated room in the palace: a domed ceiling coffered in blue and gold, white marble and gilded statues. Victoria was christened in it in 1819. The King's Gallery, red and gold, holds van Dyck's Charles I at the Hunt.
The Queen's State Apartments are plainer and more intimate: the rooms where Mary II lived, read and dined with William in private, with 17th-century paneling and William and Mary's intertwined monogram carved high on the walls of the Queen's Drawing Room. Other rooms tell the life of Queen Victoria.
Outside, don't miss the Orangery, built for Queen Anne in 1704 not just as a greenhouse but as a place for parties, with carvings by Grinling Gibbons.
The palace began as a Jacobean house. In 1689 William III and Mary II bought it: Whitehall, by the foggy river, was bad for the king's asthma. Christopher Wren enlarged it, and for seventy years it was the monarchs' favorite home.
In 1837 a young princess was woken here with the news that her uncle, King William IV, was dead and she was queen. Victoria had grown up in the palace, lonely, under her mother and the domineering Sir John Conroy. She moved to Buckingham Palace almost at once.
By the 1890s the palace was rotting, and some wanted it pulled down. Victoria refused: the palace where she was born would not be destroyed while she lived. Restored, its State Rooms opened to the public on her birthday in 1899.
Later, so many royal relatives lived here that Edward VIII called it "the aunt heap". When Diana died in 1997, more than a million bouquets piled up at its gates.
It is a gentler palace than Buckingham: a country house that grew around a courtyard, with lawns and gardens running straight into the park.
Inside, the King's State Apartments start with the King's Staircase, where William Kent painted 45 courtiers of George I's court, among them two Turkish servants, Peter "the wild boy", and Kent himself.
Beyond it, the Cupola Room, Kent's first work here, is the most splendidly decorated room in the palace: a domed ceiling coffered in blue and gold, white marble and gilded statues. Victoria was christened in it in 1819. The King's Gallery, red and gold, holds van Dyck's Charles I at the Hunt.
The Queen's State Apartments are plainer and more intimate: the rooms where Mary II lived, read and dined with William in private, with 17th-century paneling and William and Mary's intertwined monogram carved high on the walls of the Queen's Drawing Room. Other rooms tell the life of Queen Victoria.
Outside, don't miss the Orangery, built for Queen Anne in 1704 not just as a greenhouse but as a place for parties, with carvings by Grinling Gibbons.
The palace began as a Jacobean house. In 1689 William III and Mary II bought it: Whitehall, by the foggy river, was bad for the king's asthma. Christopher Wren enlarged it, and for seventy years it was the monarchs' favorite home.
In 1837 a young princess was woken here with the news that her uncle, King William IV, was dead and she was queen. Victoria had grown up in the palace, lonely, under her mother and the domineering Sir John Conroy. She moved to Buckingham Palace almost at once.
By the 1890s the palace was rotting, and some wanted it pulled down. Victoria refused: the palace where she was born would not be destroyed while she lived. Restored, its State Rooms opened to the public on her birthday in 1899.
Later, so many royal relatives lived here that Edward VIII called it "the aunt heap". When Diana died in 1997, more than a million bouquets piled up at its gates.