Buckingham Palace

What it is

Buckingham Palace is the London residence and the administrative headquarters of the British monarch, standing at the western end of The Mall in the City of Westminster. The building began as Buckingham House, put up in 1703 for the Duke of Buckingham and Normanby to a design by William Winde, and it became royal property in 1761 when George III bought it for £21,000 as a private house for Queen Charlotte. John Nash began turning the house into a palace after George IV decided on the conversion in 1826; Edward Blore finished the work after Nash was removed in 1829. Queen Victoria, on her accession in 1837, was the first monarch to live there. Blore closed the courtyard with an east wing between 1847 and 1849, and Aston Webb refaced that east front in Portland stone in 1913, producing the facade that faces the Victoria Memorial and appears in every photograph of the palace. Buckingham Palace holds 775 rooms. Most visitors see it from outside the railings rather than inside: the forecourt, the gates, the balcony and the guard on sentry duty are the encounter, and the interior opens only through the Royal Collection Trust's ticketed visits.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What's inside

The 775 rooms of Buckingham Palace break down into 19 state rooms, 52 principal bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms, 92 offices and 78 bathrooms, spread across more than 830,000 square feet of floorspace. The state rooms are the ceremonial half of the building, used for investitures, receptions and state banquets, and they are the rooms shown to ticket holders rather than the private apartments. Behind the palace lies a garden of 39 acres, or 16 hectares, described as the largest private garden in London, holding over 1,000 trees and between 20 and 25 nesting bird species. The state rooms were first opened to the public in 1993, and the money raised went at the outset towards rebuilding Windsor Castle after the fire of 1992. The front of the palace measures 355 feet across, 390 feet deep and 80 feet high. From the pavement a visitor sees the Webb facade, the central balcony, the gilded gates and the sentry boxes; the Victoria Memorial, a large statue of Queen Victoria by the sculptor Thomas Brock, sits in the roundabout directly outside the main gates and doubles as the best raised viewing platform for the guard ceremony.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

How long to spend

Allow 90 minutes at Buckingham Palace if the plan is the outside of the building: time to walk the railings, climb the steps of the Victoria Memorial for a raised view, watch a guard change through to its end, and leave along The Mall or Constitution Hill without hurrying. Ninety minutes is the figure this guide records. Cut it to 20 minutes on a day with no ceremony, when the palace is a facade, two sentries and a set of gates and there is nothing further to wait for. Anyone holding a Royal Collection Trust ticket for the state rooms should plan considerably longer, but this guide does not record a figure for the interior visit: the operator's own page could not be read, and a tour length taken from anywhere else would be a guess.

Checked 2026-08-26

Season and crowds

The reason to time a visit to Buckingham Palace is Changing the Guard. The Household Division states that Changing of The King's Guard takes place in front of Buckingham Palace at 1045 and lasts for about 45 minutes, with soldiers gathering at St James's Palace and Wellington Barracks from 1000 and marching to the palace accompanied by music. The Old Guard forms up in front of the palace and is relieved by the New Guard arriving from Wellington Barracks. The King's Guard changes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the Household Division asks visitors to check the schedule tab on its site for the accurate dates, because the pattern is not fixed for every week of the year. On days without a guard change the guard is still inspected, by the Captain at 1500. On Sundays the Colour is incorporated into the inspection, a ceremony known as the Sunday Parade, which takes place at 1000 rather than 1500; the colour is trooped through the guard while the national anthem plays and is then marched back to St James's Palace. Ceremonial activity can be altered or cancelled at very short notice, especially in wet weather, so a visit built entirely around the ceremony should carry a fallback.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Tickets

This guide records no admission price for Buckingham Palace, and that gap is deliberate rather than an omission. The Royal Collection Trust is the operator that sells entry to the state rooms, and its page at https://www.rct.uk/visit/the-state-rooms-buckingham-palace refused an automated read, returning HTTP 403 to a plain request and to a request carrying a normal browser user agent; the older address https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/visit/the-state-rooms-buckingham-palace redirects to it and www.royal.uk refused in the same way. No price, no opening date and no closing date for the state rooms is printed here because none could be read from the operator. Watching the forecourt, the gates and the guard from the public pavement and from the Victoria Memorial costs nothing and needs no ticket. Anyone wanting to go inside should open the Royal Collection Trust site directly in a browser and buy from there, and should treat any price quoted by a reseller as unverified.

Checked 2026-08-26

Getting there

Buckingham Palace stands at the end of a ceremonial approach designed for arriving on foot. The Mall was designed by Aston Webb and completed in 1911 as part of the memorial to Queen Victoria, and it extends from Admiralty Arch, across St James's Park, to the Victoria Memorial, concluding at the entrance gates into the palace forecourt. Walking that line from Trafalgar Square through Admiralty Arch is the approach the architecture was built for, and it puts a visitor at the gates with the facade filling the view. Constitution Hill runs away from the palace on the other side towards Hyde Park Corner, and Green Park and St James's Park flank the site north and east. This guide records no nearest-station distance: the Royal Collection Trust page that would state it refused to be read, and the Royal Parks pages for Green Park and St James's Park did not print transport details in the version fetched.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What to watch out for

The main trap at Buckingham Palace is arriving for a ceremony that is not happening. The Household Division warns that ceremonial activity can sometimes be altered or cancelled at very short notice, especially in wet weather, and it asks visitors to check its schedule pages for the accurate dates of upcoming guard changes rather than assuming a fixed weekly pattern. The second trap is position: the ceremony begins at 1045 and the Household Division advises arriving early to get the best view, because the railings directly in front of the gates fill first and a late arrival sees the backs of other visitors. The third is the assumption that the palace is a museum open on demand; the interior is a separately ticketed Royal Collection Trust visit with its own dates, and this guide could not read those dates. The roundabout around the Victoria Memorial is surrounded by live traffic on The Mall, Constitution Hill and Spur Road, so cross at the marked crossings and keep children close.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Photography

The palace faces roughly east, so the Webb facade takes direct morning light and falls into flat shade by mid afternoon, which is the opposite of what most visitors assume when they turn up for the late-morning ceremony. For the building itself, come early. For the ceremony, the steps of the Victoria Memorial give the only free elevation in the area and turn a wall of heads into a clear line down onto the forecourt, which is why they are occupied long before 1045. The railings give tighter frames of the sentries and the gilded gates but almost no room to step back. Constitution Hill and the north side of the forecourt catch the band on its march rather than the static formation. This section is judgement rather than a recorded rule: no photography policy for the palace exterior was read from an operator page, and none is claimed here.

Checked 2026-08-26

Where it is

• 45 min

  8 min walk · City of Westminster

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  • Historic monument

External links

• Official site
• +44 20 7766 7300
• View on Wikidata