Buckingham Palace

The face of Buckingham Palace that the world photographs, the creamy Portland stone frontage looking out over the Victoria Memorial and The Mall, is a relatively recent addition. It was slapped on in 1913. For the first century of royal occupation, the east side of the building was a mismatched patchwork of Nash’s original work, and the famous balcony did not exist at all. The balcony was Prince Albert’s idea, added between 1847 and 1849 when the east wing was constructed to enclose the old horseshoe-shaped courtyard. Queen Victoria first stepped onto it in 1851 for celebrations marking the opening of the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park. Every balcony appearance since then, from VE Day to royal weddings to Coronation fly-pasts, traces back to that single architectural decision by a German-born prince who thought the monarchy should be seen to be believed.

That gap between image and reality is the most useful frame for visiting this place. Almost everything the casual tourist assumes about Buckingham Palace turns out to be wrong, or at least incomplete, and understanding the gaps transforms a competent sightseeing stop into something genuinely worth a long day.

What It Actually Is

The palace started as Buckingham House, a townhouse built in 1703 for the Duke of Buckingham and Normanby. George III bought it in 1761 as a private family residence for Queen Charlotte, which is why it was known for a time as the Queen’s House. John Nash was brought in by George IV to turn it into something grander, and the work expanded so extravagantly that Parliament eventually sacked Nash and brought in Edward Blore to finish the job at lower cost. The building only became the official residence of the sovereign when Victoria moved in immediately after her accession in 1837, making her the first monarch ever to live there.

Victoria did not enjoy it at first. She found the building too large to manage, too drafty to heat, and impossibly exposed to public scrutiny. There is a persistent story that she nearly sold it. She did not, obviously, but the ambivalence is real: this was never a palace designed for monarchy in the way that Versailles or the Louvre were. It evolved into one, awkwardly and expensively, across several reigns.

The numbers are genuinely hard to picture. The building has 775 rooms: 19 State Rooms, 52 royal and guest bedrooms, 78 bathrooms, 188 staff bedrooms, and 92 offices. The garden covers 40 acres and is the largest private garden in London. There is a staff of dedicated clockmakers whose sole job is maintaining more than 350 clocks across the building. A lake in the garden was excavated in the early 19th century using the spoil from the construction of the Regent’s Canal. And somewhere in the grounds are the descendants of mulberry trees planted by James I, who hoped to establish a domestic silk industry in London by feeding silkworms on their fruit. The project failed completely because he used the wrong species of mulberry.

The WWII Detail That Most People Do Not Know

During the Blitz, Buckingham Palace was struck nine times directly by German bombs and hit on sixteen separate occasions in total. The most famous attack came on the morning of 13 September 1940, when a single German raider flew up the Mall and dropped five high-explosive bombs directly on the palace complex. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were in residence and heard the explosions clearly. The chapel was destroyed. A bomb landed in the inner courtyard. One unexploded device was carried out of the building on a stretcher by palace staff.

Queen Elizabeth’s response to reporters afterward has passed into British mythology: “I’m glad we’ve been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face.” Whether or not those were her exact words, the sentiment was strategic and it worked. The royal family stayed in London throughout the Blitz rather than evacuating to Canada as the Foreign Office suggested. George VI drove through bombed streets the morning after raids. The public noticed. The monarchy’s popularity, which had been damaged by the abdication crisis in 1936, recovered substantially during the war years in large part because the palace had the same broken windows as everyone else.

On 15 September 1940, RAF pilot Ray Holmes rammed a German Dornier Do 17 bomber with his Hurricane after running out of ammunition, apparently trying to prevent it from reaching the palace. The bomber came down near Victoria station. Holmes bailed out and survived.

The State Rooms: A Genuine Opinion

For 2026, the State Rooms open on 9 July and close on 27 September. July through August they are open daily from 9:30am to 7:30pm; September narrows to Thursday through Monday, closing at 6:30pm. Adult tickets (25 and over) cost £33 in 2026, with reduced prices for 18-to-24-year-olds at £21.50 and children over five at £16.50. Children under five enter free but must have a ticket booked in advance. Day-of-door tickets cost £2 to £4 extra per person and will sell out on busy days.

My honest view: the State Rooms are worth the price if you are interested in either British royal history or decorative arts, and worth skipping if you want neither. The rooms themselves, particularly the Throne Room and the White Drawing Room, are genuinely extraordinary in scale and finish. The Ballroom is the largest room in the palace and has been used for state banquets since Victoria’s reign. The Royal Collection works on display include paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Van Dyck that would anchor the permanent collection of any serious museum, displayed here in a context that most museums cannot replicate.

The weakness is the format. It is a self-guided tour through roped corridors, moving in one direction, and the crowd pressure in August means you rarely get to stand still and look properly. Book the first slot of the day, 9:30am, when the groups have not yet compressed. Get your ticket stamped for the free return visit, which is one of the better deals in London: you pay once and can come back any day during the same summer opening window.

The East Wing Tours: The New Access

In 2024 the Royal Collection Trust began offering public tours of the East Wing for the first time, opening rooms that had never before been accessible to ticket-holders. The East Wing is where the famous balcony is situated, and the Centre Room gives you a direct view out over it, with the Victoria Memorial and The Mall beyond. These are the rooms the royal family uses before appearing in public on the balcony.

During summer (July to September) you can add an East Wing Highlights Tour to your standard State Rooms visit. The tour runs 60 minutes and includes the newly restored Chinese Dining Room, the Yellow Drawing Room with its floor-to-ceiling Chinese porcelain pagodas, and the 240-foot Principal Corridor lined with works by Gainsborough and Winterhalter. Groups are capped at twenty people, which makes this the quietest way to see the palace. These add-on slots sell out considerably faster than the State Rooms themselves, sometimes weeks in advance. Book them the moment they go on sale.

From October through May, the East Wing Exclusive Guided Tours run as a standalone 90-minute experience that does not include the State Rooms. This winter access is new and gives you the East Wing at a time when the palace would otherwise be entirely closed to the public.

The Royal Mews and The King’s Gallery

Both venues open most of the year, which makes them the practical option when the State Rooms are closed.

The Royal Mews on Buckingham Palace Road houses the working royal stables and coach collection, including the Gold State Coach used at coronations, which weighs four tons and requires eight horses to pull. It is slower and more awkward than it looks in photographs. The Mews is open daily 10am to 5:30pm, with combined tickets for the Mews and The King’s Gallery running £23.80 for adults in 2026.

The King’s Gallery (it was the Queen’s Gallery until 2022) is open daily 10am to 5:30pm, last entry at 4:15pm. Rotating exhibitions draw from the Royal Collection of approximately one million objects, one of the largest private art collections in the world. The current exhibition programme changes annually. For visitors primarily interested in art rather than rooms, this is often the more satisfying afternoon than the State Rooms: smaller crowds, better sightlines, and curatorial framing that the State Rooms self-guided format cannot provide.

Changing the Guard: Do It Differently

The official advice is to station yourself at the palace railings on Buckingham Gate Road and arrive early. That advice is not wrong, but it produces the worst possible experience of the ceremony. You are standing behind iron railings with hundreds of other people, craning for a glimpse of something happening inside a courtyard. The famous bearskin hats are mostly invisible at this angle.

The alternative that most guides mention but few people actually follow: go to Wellington Barracks on Birdcage Walk instead. This is where the New Guard assembles for inspection before marching to the palace. Arrive by 10:15am. The band plays at close range, the officers inspect the troops, and you can actually see the ceremony rather than the backs of other tourists. The atmosphere is completely different: quieter, closer, more legible as a piece of military ritual. After the inspection, you can follow the guard as they march up Birdcage Walk, then position yourself on The Mall to watch the approach to the palace gates.

The ceremony currently runs most Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 11am, with occasional Sunday parades around 10:45am. The schedule is confirmed about six weeks in advance and can change without much notice due to weather, state visits, or operational requirements. Check the official Household Division website the day before your visit. Do not build an entire itinerary around a specific date without a backup plan.

A detail worth knowing: the five regiments of the Household Division rotate through the ceremony on a schedule, so which regiment you see depends on the day. The Grenadier Guards, Coldstream Guards, Scots Guards, Irish Guards, and Welsh Guards each have slightly different cap badges and regimental histories. The bearskin hats are approximately 45cm tall and weigh around 1.5kg. They are not worn in combat, obviously, but they were originally functional: the extra height made soldiers appear taller and more imposing in battle, and the dense bear fur deflected sabre blows.

The Flag, the Standard, and What They Actually Mean

The Royal Standard flies when the monarch is in residence at the palace. The Union flag flies when they are not. This sounds simple but it produces a genuine planning variable: if you arrive hoping to see the Standard and the palace is flying the Union flag, the King is elsewhere (almost certainly at Windsor, Sandringham, or Balmoral depending on the season). The State Rooms open precisely because the King is at Balmoral for the summer, so during July through September you will see the Union flag. Do not mistake this for a lesser version of the visit.

St James’s Park: The Extension You Should Not Skip

The palace sits at the western end of St James’s Park, and the park is underrated as a destination in itself. The central lake was dug in the 17th century and modified repeatedly; the view from the bridge over the lake, looking east toward Westminster, is one of the better views in London that does not require any ticket. Pelicans have been kept in the park since 1664 when the Russian Ambassador gave a pair to Charles II. The current residents are still there and tend to congregate near Duck Island in the late afternoon.

If you combine the State Rooms with a walk through St James’s Park to the Mall and back along Birdcage Walk, you have a half-day that covers the palace, the park, and the Wellington Barracks approach without any transport or queuing beyond the palace entrance itself.

Where to Eat Near the Palace

The in-park cafes on St James’s Park do a reasonable flat white and a serviceable sandwich. They are not destination dining, but they are genuinely useful if you are mid-itinerary and need to stop without losing momentum.

For something better without going far: the Cinnamon Club in Great Smith Street, Westminster, is about 12 minutes’ walk and occupies a former Victorian library building. The room is exceptional, the cooking is Indian with strong British seasonal sourcing, and the set lunch runs from £35 per person, which for the quality and the location is fair. It is popular with people who work in Westminster rather than people visiting it, which is usually a good sign.

The Rubens at the Palace on Buckingham Palace Road is the most convenient upscale option and offers afternoon tea in the Palace Lounge with direct views of the palace facade. At around £55 per person it is a specific kind of experience, more about the view and the occasion than the food itself, and there is nothing wrong with that if that is what you want.

The Victoria station area, five minutes’ walk south, has every chain option in the known world. None of them are traps, exactly, but none of them are reasons to choose that neighbourhood for lunch when Westminster is a short walk north.

Getting There

Green Park is the most useful Tube station: it is a short walk down Constitution Hill to the palace gates and avoids the Victoria station crowds. St James’s Park station (District and Circle lines) is equally close from the east side, which puts you at the park entrance rather than the palace forecourt. Victoria station is slightly further but useful if you are coming from south London or taking the Gatwick Express.

The bus routes along Victoria Street and Buckingham Palace Road are slower but useful on days when the Tube is congested. The 11, 11 (toward Hammersmith), and C1 all stop nearby.

Cycling is practical. The quiet roads through St James’s Park are open to cyclists and link the palace to Westminster Bridge and the South Bank without touching any busy roads.

A Note on Crowds and Timing

August is the busiest month by a substantial margin. School holidays, the State Rooms being open, and every European summer holiday-maker converging on London simultaneously. If your dates are flexible, the first and last weeks of the July-to-September opening window (first week of July and the final weeks of September) are meaningfully quieter, and September’s reduced hours (Thursday to Monday) further thin the crowds on operating days.

The Wellington Barracks tip is worth repeating as a concrete action: on any day when Changing the Guard is scheduled, walk to the corner of Birdcage Walk and Petty France by 10:10am. Watch the New Guard form up from the pavement outside the Barracks. Follow them toward the palace at a walk. This is the version of the ceremony that actually makes sense as a spectacle, rather than a distant, partially-obscured performance seen through iron railings.