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Buckingham Palace facts for kids

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Buckingham Palace, London - April 2009
Buckingham Palace. This is the principal façade, the East Front; originally constructed by Edward Blore and completed in 1850. It was remodelled in 1913 by Sir Aston Webb.
Buckingham Palace, London, England, 24Jan04
Buckingham Palace and the Victoria Memorial

Buckingham Palace is a palace in the City of Westminster, which is part of central London, England in the United Kingdom. It is the official residence where the British monarch lives and works. The palace is a setting for state occasions and royal hospitality, and has been a focus for the British people at times of national rejoicing and crisis.

Buckingham Palace was built in 1703 by John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normandy, as a townhouse (a residence in London). It was bought by the British royal family in 1761. It became the official London home of the family in 1837 and was greatly expanded in the 19th century. It has 775 rooms, 19 staterooms, and 78 bathrooms. Leading up to it is a ceremonial road called The Mall. A German bomb damaged the Palace during the London blitz.

The palace's guard is changed every day at 11am.

History

Buckingham House 1710
Buckingham House, c.1710, was designed by William Winde for the 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby. This façade evolved into today's Grand Entrance on the west (inner) side of the quadrangle, with the Green Drawing Room above.

From Queen's House to palace

The house was originally intended as a private retreat, and in particular for Queen Charlotte, and was known as The Queen's House—14 of their 15 children were born there. St. James's Palace remained the official and ceremonial royal residence.

Remodelling of the structure began in 1762. After his accession to the throne in 1820, George IV continued the renovation with the idea in mind of a small, comfortable home.

While the work was in progress, in 1826, the King decided to modify the house into a palace with the help of his architect John Nash.

Some furnishings were transferred from Carlton House, and others had been bought in France after the French Revolution.

The external facade was designed in the French neo-classical influence preferred by George IV.

The cost of the renovations grew exponentially and by 1829, the extravagance of Nash's designs resulted in his removal as architect. On the death of George IV in 1830, his younger brother William IV hired Edward Blore to finish the work. At one stage, William considered converting the palace into the new Houses of Parliament, after the destruction of the existing namesake by fire in 1834.

Home of the monarch

Buckingham Palace engraved by J.Woods after Hablot Browne & R.Garland publ 1837 edited
The palace c. 1837, depicting the Marble Arch, which served as the ceremonial entrance to the Palace precincts. It was moved to make way for the east wing, built in 1847, which enclosed the quadrangle.

Buckingham Palace finally became the principal royal residence in 1837, on the accession of Queen Victoria, who was the first monarch to reside there as her predecessor William IV had died before its completion.

Following the Queen's marriage in 1840, her husband, Prince Albert, concerned himself with a reorganisation of the household offices and staff, and with the design faults of the palace.

By 1847, the couple had found the palace too small for court life and their growing family, so a new wing was built enclosing the central quadrangle. The large East Front facing The Mall is today the "public face" of Buckingham Palace and contains the balcony from which the Royal Family acknowledge the crowds on momentous occasions and annually after Trooping the Colour. The ballroom wing and a further suite of state rooms were also built in this period.

Before Prince Albert's death, the palace was frequently the scene of musical entertainments, and the greatest contemporary musicians entertained at Buckingham Palace. Under Victoria, Buckingham Palace was frequently the scene of lavish costume balls, in addition to the routine royal ceremonies, investitures and presentations.

Widowed in 1861, the grief-stricken Queen withdrew from public life and left Buckingham Palace to live at Windsor Castle, Balmoral Castle, and Osborne House. For many years the palace was seldom used, and even neglected. Eventually, public opinion forced her to return to London, though even then she preferred to live elsewhere whenever possible. Court functions were still held at Windsor Castle rather than at the palace, presided over by the sombre Queen habitually dressed in mourning black while Buckingham Palace remained shuttered for most of the year.

Interior

The Palace measures 108 metres by 120 metres, is 24 metres high and contains over 77,000 m2 (830,000 sq ft) of floorspace. The principal rooms of the palace are contained on the piano nobile behind the west-facing garden facade at the rear of the palace. The centre of this ornate suite of state rooms is the Music Room, its large bow the dominant feature of the facade. Flanking the Music Room are the Blue and the White Drawing rooms. At the centre of the suite, serving as a corridor to link the state rooms, is the Picture Gallery, which is top-lit and 55 yards (50 m) long. The Gallery is hung with numerous works including some by Rembrandt, van Dyck, Rubens and Vermeer; other rooms leading from the Picture Gallery are the Throne Room and the Green Drawing Room. The Green Drawing room serves as a huge anteroom to the Throne Room, and is part of the ceremonial route to the throne from the Guard Room at the top of the Grand staircase. The Guard Room contains white marble statues of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, in Roman costume, set in a tribune lined with tapestries. These very formal rooms are used only for ceremonial and official entertaining, but are open to the public every summer.

Directly underneath the State Apartments is a suite of slightly less grand rooms known as the semi-state apartments. Opening from the Marble Hall, these rooms are used for less formal entertaining, such as luncheon parties and private audiences. Some of the rooms are named and decorated for particular visitors, such as the 1844 Room, which was decorated in that year for the State visit of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia, and, on the other side of the Bow Room, the 1855 Room, in honour of the visit of Emperor Napoleon III of France. At the centre of this suite is the Bow Room, through which thousands of guests pass annually to the Queen's Garden Parties in the Gardens beyond. The Queen uses privately a smaller suite of rooms in the North wing.

Salon de musica
Prince Albert's music room, one of the smaller less formal rooms at the palace, in 1887

Between 1847 and 1850, when Blore was building the new east wing, the Brighton Pavilion was once again plundered of its fittings. As a result, many of the rooms in the new wing have a distinctly oriental atmosphere. The red and blue Chinese Luncheon Room is made up from parts of the Brighton banqueting and music rooms, but has a chimney piece designed by W.M. Feetham. The Yellow Drawing Room has wall paper which had been supplied in 1817 for the Brighton Saloon, and the chimney piece in this room is a European vision of what the Chinese equivalent would look like, complete with nodding mandarins in niches and fearsome winged dragons, designed by Robert Jones.

Pynequeensbreakfastroombuckinghamhouse edited
The Queen's Breakfast Room

At the centre of this wing is the famous balcony, with the Centre Room behind its glass doors. This is a Chinese-style saloon enhanced by Queen Mary, who, working with the designer Sir Charles Allom, created a more "binding" Chinese theme in the late 1920s, although the lacquer doors were brought from Brighton in 1873. Running the length of the piano nobile of the east wing is the great gallery, modestly known as the Principal Corridor, which runs the length of the eastern side of the quadrangle. It has mirrored doors, and mirrored cross walls reflecting porcelain pagodas and other oriental furniture from Brighton. The Chinese Luncheon Room and Yellow Drawing Room are situated at each end of this gallery, with the Centre Room obviously placed in the centre.

The original early 19th-century interior designs, many of which still survive, included widespread use of brightly coloured scagliola and blue and pink lapis, on the advice of Sir Charles Long. King Edward VII oversaw a partial redecoration in a Belle epoque cream and gold colour scheme.

When paying a state visit to Britain, foreign heads of state are usually entertained by the Queen at Buckingham Palace. They are allocated a large suite of rooms known as the Belgian suite, situated at the foot of the Minister's Staircase, on the ground floor of the North-facing garden wing. The rooms of the suite are linked by narrow corridors, one given extra height and perspective by saucer domes designed by Nash in the style of Soane. A second corridor in the suite has Gothic influenced cross over vaulting. The Belgian rooms themselves were decorated in their present style and named after Prince Albert's uncle Léopold I, first King of the Belgians. However, at this time the suite was not reserved exclusively for foreign heads of state; in 1936, the suite briefly became the private apartments of the palace when they were occupied by Edward VIII.

Court ceremonies

Louis Haghe The New Ballroom 1856
The Ballroom is the largest room at Buckingham Palace. It was added by Queen Victoria and is used for ceremonies such as investitures and state banquets. This picture dates from 1856. The polychrome colour scheme has been replaced by mainly white decoration with gold details and red upholstery.

Court dress

Formerly, men not wearing military uniform would wear knee breeches of an 18th-century design. Women's evening dress included obligatory trains and tiaras or feathers in their hair (or both).

The dress code governing formal court uniform and dress has progressively relaxed. After World War I, when Queen Mary wished to follow fashion by raising her skirts a few inches from the ground, she requested a Lady-in-Waiting to shorten her own skirt first to gauge the King's reaction. King George V was horrified and her hemline remained unfashionably low. Subsequently, King George VI and his consort, Queen Elizabeth, allowed daytime skirts to rise.

Today, there is no official dress code. Most men invited to Buckingham Palace in the daytime choose to wear service uniform or morning coats, and in the evening, depending on the formality of the occasion, black tie or white tie. If the occasion is "white tie" then women, if they possess one, wear a tiara.

Presentation of debutantes

Court presentations of aristocratic girls as to the monarch took place in the Throne Room. These girls were known as débutantes, and the occasion—termed their "coming out"—represented their first entrée into society. Débutantes wore full court dress, with three tall ostrich feathers in their hair. They entered, curtsied, performed a choreographed backwards walk and a further curtsy, while manoeuvring a dress train of prescribed length. (The ceremony, known as evening courts, corresponded to the "court drawing rooms" of earlier reigns.)

In 1958, the Queen abolished the presentation parties for débutantes, replacing them with Garden Parties. Today, the Throne Room is used for the reception of formal addresses such as those given to the Queen on her Jubilees. It is here on the throne dais that royal wedding portraits and family photographs are taken.

Investitures

Investitures, which include the conferring of knighthoods by dubbing with a sword, and other awards take place in the palace's Ballroom, built in 1854. At 36.6 m (120.08 ft) long, 18 m (59.06 ft) wide and 13.5 m (44.29 ft) high (120' X 59' X 44' 3.5"), it is the largest room in the palace. It has replaced the throne room in importance and use. During investitures, the Queen stands on the throne dais beneath a giant, domed velvet canopy, which is known as a shamiana or a baldachin and was used at the coronation Durbar in Delhi in 1911. A military band plays in the musicians' gallery as award recipients approach the Queen and receive their honours, watched by their families and friends.

State banquets

Buckingham Palace Grand Staircase The Graphic 1870
Guests ascending the Grand Staircase in 1870.

State banquets also take place in the Ballroom; these formal dinners take place on the first evening of a state visit by a visiting Head of State. On these occasions, 150 or more guests in formal "white tie and decorations", including tiaras for women, may dine off gold plate. The largest and most formal reception at Buckingham Palace takes place every November, when the Queen entertains members of the foreign diplomatic corps resident in London. On this occasion, all the state rooms are in use, as the Royal Family proceed through them beginning through the great north doors of the Picture Gallery. As Nash had envisaged, all the large, double-mirrored doors stand open, reflecting the numerous crystal chandeliers and sconces, causing a deliberate optical illusion of space and light.

Other ceremonies and functions

Smaller ceremonies such as the reception of new ambassadors take place in the "1844 Room". Here too the Queen holds small lunch parties, and often meetings of the Privy Council. Larger lunch parties often take place in the curved and domed Music Room, or the State Dining Room. On all formal occasions the ceremonies are attended by the Yeomen of the Guard in their historic uniforms, and other officers of the court such as the Lord Chamberlain.

Since the bombing of the palace chapel in World War II, royal christenings have sometimes taken place in the Music Room. The Queen's first three children were all baptised here in a special gold font. Prince William was also christened in the Music Room; however, his brother, Prince Harry, was christened at St George's Chapel, Windsor.

The largest functions of the year are the Queen's Garden Parties for up to 8,000 invitees in the Garden.

Modern history

Buckingham palace 1909
Buckingham Palace panorama, 1909

In 1901 the accession of Edward VII saw new life breathed into the palace. The new King and his wife Queen Alexandra had always been at the forefront of London high society, and their friends, known as "the Marlborough House Set", were considered to be the most eminent and fashionable of the age. Buckingham Palace—the Ballroom, Grand Entrance, Marble Hall, Grand Staircase, vestibules and galleries redecorated in the Belle epoque cream and gold colour scheme they retain today—once again became a setting for entertaining on a majestic scale. Many people feel King Edward's heavy redecoration of the palace does not complement Nash's original work. However, it has been allowed to remain for over one hundred years.

The last major building work took place during the reign of King George V when, in 1913, Sir Aston Webb redesigned Blore's 1850 East Front to resemble in part Giacomo Leoni's Lyme Park in Cheshire. This new, refaced principal facade (of Portland stone) was designed to be the backdrop to the Victoria Memorial, a large memorial statue of Queen Victoria, placed outside the main gates. George V, who had succeeded Edward VII in 1910, had a more serious personality than his father; greater emphasis was now placed on official entertaining and royal duties than on lavish parties. He arranged a series of command performances featuring jazz musicians such as the Original Dixieland Jazz Band(1919) - the first jazz performance for a head of state, Sidney Bechet, and Louis Armstrong (1932) which earned the palace a nomination in 2009 for a (Kind of) Blue Plaque by the Brecon Jazz Festival as one of the venues making the greatest contribution to jazz music in the United Kingdom. George V's wife Queen Mary was a connoisseur of the arts, and took a keen interest in the Royal Collection of furniture and art, both restoring and adding to it. Queen Mary also had many new fixtures and fittings installed, such as the pair of marble Empire-style chimneypieces by Benjamin Vulliamy, dating from 1810, which the Queen had installed in the ground floor Bow Room, the huge low room at the centre of the garden facade. Queen Mary was also responsible for the decoration of the Blue Drawing Room. This room, 69 feet (21 m) long, previously known as the South Drawing Room, has a ceiling designed specially by Nash, coffered with huge gilt console brackets.

A 1999 book published by the Royal Collection Department reported that the palace contained 19 state rooms, 52 principal bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms, 92 offices, and 78 bathrooms. While this may seem large, it is small when compared to the Russian imperial palaces in Saint Petersburg and at Tsarskoe Selo, the Papal Palace in Rome, the Royal Palace of Madrid, the Stockholm Palace, or indeed the former Palace of Whitehall, and tiny compared to the Forbidden City and Potala Palace. The relative smallness of the palace may be best appreciated from within, looking out over the inner quadrangle. A minor change was made in 1938, in which the north-west pavilion, designed by Nash as a conservatory and altered in 1911-13 to a racquets court, was converted into a swimming pool.

Victoria.memorial.london.arp
The Victoria Memorial was created by sculptor Sir Thomas Brock in 1911 and erected in front of the main gates at Buckingham Palace on a surround constructed by architect Sir Aston Webb.

During World War I the palace, then the home of King George V and Queen Mary, escaped unscathed. Its more valuable contents were evacuated to Windsor but the Royal family remained in situ. The King imposed rationing at the palace, much to the dismay of his guests and household. To the King's later regret, David Lloyd George persuaded him to go further by ostentatiously locking the wine cellars and refraining from alcohol, to set a good example to the supposedly inebriated working class. The workers continued to imbibe and the King was left unhappy at his enforced abstinence.

The palace fared worse during World War II; it was bombed no less than seven times, the most serious and publicised of which resulted in the destruction of the palace chapel in 1940. Coverage of this event was played in cinemas all over the UK to show the common suffering of rich and poor. One bomb fell in the palace quadrangle while King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were in residence, and many windows were blown in and the chapel destroyed. War-time coverage of such incidents was severely restricted, however. The King and Queen were filmed inspecting their bombed home, the smiling Queen, as always, immaculately dressed in a hat and matching coat seemingly unbothered by the damage around her. It was at this time the Queen famously declared: "I'm glad we have been bombed. Now I can look the East End in the face". The Royal family were seen as sharing their subjects' hardship, as The Sunday Graphic reported:

By the Editor: The King and Queen have endured the ordeal which has come to their subjects. For the second time a German bomber has tried to bring death and destruction to the home of Their Majesties...When this war is over the common danger which King George and Queen Elizabeth have shared with their people will be a cherished memory and an inspiration through the years.

On 15 September 1940, an RAF pilot, Ray Holmes, rammed a German plane attempting to bomb the palace. Holmes had run out of ammunition and made the quick choice to ram it. Both planes crashed and their pilots survived, and the incident was captured on film. The plane's engine was later exhibited at the Imperial War Museum in London. The British pilot became a King's Messenger following the war, and died at the age of 90 in 2005.

On VE Day—8 May 1945—the palace was the centre of British celebrations, with the King, Queen and the Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen, and Princess Margaret appearing on the balcony, with the palace's blacked-out windows behind them, to the cheers from a vast crowd in the Mall.

The boy Jones was an intruder who gained entry to the palace on three occasions between 1838 and 1841 as recorded by Charles Dickens some 40 years later. In 1982, Michael Fagan, was able to break into the palace twice, and conversed with the Queen on one of these. Reportedly, Her Majesty maintained her composure while the palace police were en route and Fagan made no threatening motions towards the Queen.

The Garden, the Royal Mews and the Mall

West facade of Buckingham Palace
The west façade of Buckingham Palace, faced in Bath stone, seen from the Palace Gardens.

At the rear of the palace, is the large and park-like garden which, together with its lake, is the largest private garden in London. Here the Queen hosts her annual garden parties each summer, and also holds large functions to celebrate royal milestones, such as jubilees. Originally landscaped by Capability Brown, it was redesigned by William Townsend Aiton of Kew Gardens and John Nash. The artificial lake was completed in 1828 and is supplied with water from the Serpentine, a river which runs through Hyde Park.

Adjacent to the palace is the Royal Mews, also designed by Nash, where the royal carriages, including the Gold State Coach, are housed. This rococo gilt coach, designed by Sir William Chambers in 1760, has painted panels by G. B. Cipriani. It was first used for the State Opening of Parliament by George III in 1762 and is used by the monarch only for coronations or jubilee celebrations. Also housed in the Mews are the carriage horses used in royal ceremonial processions.

The Mall, a ceremonial approach route to the palace, was designed by Sir Aston Webb and completed in 1911 as part of a grand memorial to Queen Victoria. It extends from Admiralty Arch, up around the Victoria Memorial, bounded by the Canada Gate, South Africa Gate and Australia Gate, to the palace forecourt. This route is used by the cavalcades and motorcades of all visiting heads of state, and by the Royal Family on state occasions such as the annual State Opening of Parliament as well as Trooping the Colour each year.

21st century: Royal use and public access

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The Royal Family on the balcony in 1986

Every year some 50,000 invited guests are entertained at garden parties, receptions, audiences, and banquets. The Garden Parties, usually three, are held in the summer, usually in July. The Forecourt of Buckingham Palace is used for Changing of the Guard, a major ceremony and tourist attraction (daily during the summer months; every other day during the winter).

The palace, like Windsor Castle, is owned by the British state. It is not the monarch's personal property, unlike Sandringham House and Balmoral Castle. Many of the contents from Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Kensington Palace and St. James's Palace are known collectively as the Royal Collection; owned by the Sovereign, they can, on occasions, be viewed by the public at the Queen's Gallery, near the Royal Mews. Unlike the palace and the castle, the gallery is open continually and displays a changing selection of items from the collection. The rooms containing the Queen's Gallery are on the site of the former chapel, which was damaged by one of the seven bombs to fall on the palace during World War II. The palace's state rooms have been open to the public during August and September since 1993. The money raised in entry fees was originally put towards the rebuilding of Windsor Castle following the 1992 fire which destroyed many of its state rooms.

In May 2009, in response to a request from the Royal Family to the government for money for a backlog of repairs to the palace, a group of MPs on the Public Accounts Committee proposed that in return for the extra £4 million in annual funds requested, the palace should be open to the public more than the 60 days it is now, as well as when members of the Royal Family are in residence. The British Government currently provides £15 million yearly for the palace's upkeep.

Thus, Buckingham Palace is a symbol and home of the British monarchy, an art gallery and tourist attraction. Behind the gilded railings and gates which were made by the Bromsgrove Guild and Webb's famous facade which has been described in a book published by the Royal Collection as looking "like everybody's idea of a palace"; is not only the weekday home of the Queen and Prince Philip but also the London residence of the Duke of York and the Earl and Countess of Wessex. The palace also houses the offices of the Royal Household and is the workplace of 450 people.


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Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Palacio de Buckingham para niños

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