Kensington Palace

Of all the royal palaces in London, Kensington is the most intimate and the most layered. It began as a private house, became a royal residence by accident, sheltered a series of monarchs who felt overlooked or excluded from mainstream court life, and then, in the 20th century, became the London home of the most photographed woman in the world. Today it houses the Prince and Princess of Wales and their children, and it remains a working royal residence, its state apartments open to visitors between the roped-off sections where the family actually lives. The combination of three centuries of royal history and Diana's more recent presence gives Kensington a kind of double exposure that no other palace in England quite possesses.

William III, who had just deposed his father-in-law James II, purchased Nottingham House, a modest Jacobean manor, in 1689, immediately after his accession. His reason was medical: the king suffered from severe asthma, and the Thames air around the official royal residences at Whitehall and Greenwich was thought to aggravate it. Kensington, two miles west of London, had cleaner air. He commissioned Christopher Wren to convert the manor into a palace, adding the four corner pavilions that gave it its characteristic compact profile. The work was done quickly, since William wanted to move in before winter, and the resulting palace still shows faint signs of that hurry in its slightly improvised overall plan.

Queen Anne, who succeeded William after his death following a riding accident at Hampton Court, commissioned the Orangery in 1704, a long, classically elegant structure by Nicholas Hawksmoor and John Vanbrugh, designed for the winter cultivation of orange and lemon trees. It remains one of the finest early 18th-century interiors in England and now serves as the palace café, a use that feels entirely in keeping with the room's original genteel purpose. Anne herself died at Kensington, from gout and general overindulgence, in 1714.

The interior most visitors experience today was largely created by William Kent, the painter and architect who became the favourite of George I and George II. Between 1722 and 1727, Kent repainted and redesigned the King's Grand Staircase, the Cupola Room, the grandest room in the palace, with its trompe-l'oeil architecture and gilded Ionic columns, and the King's Drawing Room. Kent's Kensington interiors rank among the most complete and coherent surviving examples of English Baroque decorative painting, and they reward slow looking rather than a quick pass-through.

Victoria was born at Kensington Palace on 24 May 1819, the daughter of the Duke of Kent, and spent her entire childhood here under the rigid supervision of her mother's comptroller, Sir John Conroy, a regime that became known as the Kensington System. It was designed to keep the heir to the throne isolated from any independent influence: Victoria was confined to a small circle of approved companions, was not permitted to sleep alone until she became queen, and was never allowed to be alone with any visitor without her mother present. When she became queen in June 1837, at the age of 18, on learning of William IV's death from an emissary who had arrived at Kensington at six in the morning, her first recorded act was to demand an hour entirely alone. She never lived at Kensington again.

Kensington Palace was the London home of Diana, Princess of Wales, from her marriage to Prince Charles in 1981 until her death in Paris in August 1997. Apartments 8 and 9, her private quarters, are not open to visitors, but the palace has permanently incorporated Diana into its public narrative rather than treating her as a separate, awkward footnote. The Sunken Garden, replanted in her memory in 2017, is one of the most visited spots on the grounds, and the palace's approach to presenting her life, through dress choices, private photographs and the context of her public work, is notably restrained rather than hagiographic. Balancing its centuries-old historic mission with Diana's far more recent and emotionally charged legacy is something the palace manages with real skill.

The current permanent displays cover the King's State Apartments, with Kent's painted interiors and the Cupola Room; the Queen's State Apartments, telling the story of the Stuart queens Mary II and Anne; Victoria Revealed, a permanent exhibition on Victoria's life and childhood at Kensington; and, running March to November 2026, The Last Princesses of Punjab, covering Sophia Duleep Singh and the Punjabi princesses who became British suffragettes, one of the more unexpected and historically important stories the palace currently tells.