Buckingham Palace

Website: http://www.royal.gov.uk

Today I went on a tour around the State Rooms of Buckingham Palace. The palace is only open at certain times of the year and have intended to visit it ever since I first moved to London over 5 years ago!

I'd booked my £14 student ticket a few days earlier for a slot at 2pm today. I arrived and had to work hard to navigate the hordes of tourists and find the Buckingham Palace Shop where I could pick up my ticket. I then took my ticket to the Visitor Entrance at 1.45pm in time for my 2pm slot. There were lots of young helpful "wardens" dressed in smart uniforms to help the clueless tourists. We were corralled in a holding area while we waited for the "airport style security area" to empty ahead.
We finally were let through and filed slowly through the metal detectors and bag scanners. After that we snaked through to a tent to pick up our complementary audio guide. I chose the English language one, slung it around my neck, pressed the green PLAY button and set off.

As the stirring introductory music played I stepped up the red carpet and entered the Palace. I usually hate audio guides but have to admit that the one used at Buckingham Palace was really good. It provided options to select what to hear about, the information was interesting and not too lengthy and it always said things like "If you would like to then you might consider moving to the next room..." rather than the usual "Next we have...".

We began by seeing the quadrangle which is a huge open square just behind the front of the Palace. It's used for parades and for greeting heads of state. They enter the vast quadrangle through a small archway at the front and, standing right in front of them, is the formal entrance to the Palace - an imposing multi-columned entranceway.

Just inside the formal entrance is the Entrance Hall which is a large impressive room with rich red carpets, immense columns and gold decoration everywhere. From here we climbed a staircase with an intricate bronze balustrade which was made a long time ago and, in modern day money, would cost £210,000 (that's just for the balustrade alone!).

We then entered the Guards Room and the Throne Room. All the interiors were designed by architect John Nash and he must have been good. The rooms are supposed to impress visiting heads of state and diplomats and they certainly meet that goal. Everywhere is rich wallpaper, carpets, silk, golden designs, complex mouldings, vast chandeliers etc etc. The Throne Room held the coronation thrones of the Queen and Prince Philip as well as a few coronation thrones from previous monarchs. During my visit I discovered that asking questions to the older "wardens" got a better answer to my question than asking the younger ones.

Next stop was the Picture Gallery - a narrow 50ft long room with huge paintings hanging on the walls. This led to another narrow room with curved, etched skylights in the roof. Apparently there was a small fire recently that led to three of these skylights being smashed. Although they could have been replaced by modern glass makers the original workers were thoughful enough to have made 4 spare windows. These were found in the Palace carefully crated up in a store room. They were installed after waiting 100 years.

We passed a display of photos of the Queen with visiting heads of state and were then led to the Ball Room. This was one of the most impressive rooms and is where the Queen hosts state dinners for visiting heads of state. It's apparently one of the largest rooms in London and luckily had a seating area where the tourists could rest. I took a seat there amongst the prostrate visitors. It was like sitting in a battle-field hospital surrounded by the dead and the dying.

In the center of the room is a huge U-shaped table that can seat around 200 people. The Queen sits at the centre of the U with her guests on either arm ahead of her. The chinaware and silverware are layed out days in advanced and carefully measured onto the tablecloth - to ensure they're all in a perfect line when you look down the table. Each place has a number of different glasses - for red wine, white wine, port, champagne etc. I've eaten in places where they put a lot of time into the presentation I've noticed that the food is always a bit of a let down. I hope the food they serve up in the state banquets is tasty! Next was a little video display about the behind-the-scenes preparation for the banquets. All the plates etc are washed by hand because they're too valuable to entrust to a dishwashing machine.

The next few rooms all overlook the gardens at the rear of the Palace. They were differently themed and contained a variety of very fancy furniture. There was a table which once belonged to Napolean and is made of one huge disc of porclein which, by firing and gilding, was decorated with very intricate artwork that took 6 years to complete! One of the most valuable pieces in the collection was a writing desk which had layer-upon-layer of inlayed wood.

We then travelled downstairs again and into a long corridor with marble statues on display. By far the most impressive was a huge 2 metre tall statue of the gods Mars and Venus sculpted from a single block of marble.

The tour finally finished at the rear of the Palace, exiting onto the Garden Terrace. Here we returned our audio guides and were allowed to take photos once again. Immediately all the tourists whipped out their cameras and began snapping the rear-end of the Palace:
The tourists also got to visit a gift shop which they thrived in:I should admit that I bought some chocolates there too... There was a nice walk out through the gardens:
Summary: An impressive place to visit. The rooms, the decoration and the expensive furniture are all well worth seeing.