Buckingham Palace State Rooms Review
Reviewed by Emma Rogers
If you’ve ever wanted to see how the Queen, and other members of the Royal Family live, then this is the London tour not to miss.
The Buckingham Palace State Rooms are 13 of the 20 State Rooms available to the public to view from July to 1 October, with the freedom to walk around the exhibition at your own pace, complete with an audio guide. The rooms are sumptuous and extremely elaborate, which will be of no surprise to anyone who has seen rare internal photos of the Palace in recent years. The audio guide takes you from master staircase to the ballroom built by Victoria, and likewise the history of the Palace up to the modern day and how Victoria and her family changed the original small palace into the Nash architecture during the 1860s and beyond. You can see the original Victorian throne that she was coronated from, as well as the ‘ER’ and ‘P’ labelled thrones that were used during the Queen’s coronation in 1953. There are plenty of guides on hand to make sure that you have your questions answered and to point out details that you might have missed.
This year, there are two added exhibitions. The first one is situated throughout the tour and gives examples of the gifts given to the Queen and Prince Philip during their visits, either abroad or head of state to this country. Arranged by geography, we start with Europe and the UK then move to Australia and Oceana, back through Asia and the Middle East then to the Americas. It’s interesting to see the different ideas ‘gift’ conjures up and how ornate, or down to earth, some of the countries seem to be. The 1957 New Zealand gift of a hand-painted giant jigsaw of the islands was taken to all of the girl guide groups in New Zealand at the time, and a book of all the girls’ signatures was presented to the Queen along with the puzzle. Moving to the Asia’s and Middle Eastern countries, the gifts become more lavish with tea sets made of silver and jewellery items which are, well, fit for a queen! The British items are often befitting to the local area they came from, such as a coal pony and miner sculpture which was made from pressed coal in the North East, and lace from Nottingham.
The second interesting exhibition is the tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales on the occasion of 20 years since her tragic death. The centrepiece of the display is the Princess’s desk which she sat at daily at Kensington Palace, re-created by her sons as it was on the day she died. Personal items adorn the furniture including photos of her family, cassette tapes of her favourite musicians, and a pair of ballet shoes. It’s very interesting to see how modest her desk was, especially as there was no laptop, monitor or even a typewriter! Just a fountain pen and a bottle of ink. This could have been the desk of any busy working mum from the last 300 years in time, except for the photos of her boys. Some of the photos I’d never before so were obviously from her personal collection and never released to the public before. It’s very poignant to think that it was 20 years ago that she died and here we are, still fascinated with the royal princess that was never to be Queen. This was the exhibition that most people were interested in.
The whole tour took about 2½ hours. It’s very well put together and the whole site is very well organised. You have to go through airport-like security to get in, including body scanners for metal objects. Once inside, the audio tours give a good background, with optional audio pieces on some of the items. There is a strict policy of no photographs in the Palace whatsoever, not even from outside looking in. Everyone seemed to obey this. Once you get to the end of the tour, there is a brilliant family area with booths for taking photos for the children, a reading corner, puzzles and colouring and sticking. Although very small children wouldn’t appreciate the Palace itself, it is interesting for them to take part at the end. The cafe, which we very much enjoyed, had reasonably priced and generously sized lunch items and drinks and a huge area for eating, so it’s a good idea to eat at the end as there’s another rule about not eating or drinking at all inside. The walk to the exit is through the Buckingham Palace gardens, with annotations on the trees and plants that had been donated and a lovely ice cream shop on the way too!
It’s a lovely half day spent learning about how the monarchy has changed throughout time, and looking at the works of art the Queen has at her luxury every day. We thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone.
Rating: 5/5
Ticket prices: £23 Adult / £13 Under 17s, under 5s are free / £59 Family
For more information or to book tickets visit www.royalcollection.org.uk.
Buckingham Palace, London SW1A 1AA
