Buckingham Palace
Buckingham castle is the official London abode of Her Majesty The Queen and as such is one of the best known and most powerful symbols of the British monarchy. Yet it has been a royal abode for merely merely over two hundred and thirty old ages and a castle for much less ; and its name, known the universe over, is owed non to a sovereign but to an English Duke.
Buckingham House was built for John, first Duke of Buckingham, between 1702 and 1705. It was sold to the Crown in 1762. Surprisingly, since it was a big house in a dominating place, it was ne’er intended to be the chief abode of the sovereign.
Although King George III modernised and enlarged the house well in the 1760s and 17770s, the transmutations that give the edifice its present palatial character were carried out for King George IY by Nash in the 1820s, by Edward Blore for King William IY and Queen Victoria in the 1830s and 40s, and by James Pennethoooorne in the 1850s.
In the reign of King Edward YII, much of
the present white and gilded ornament was substituted for the richly coloured nineteenth century strategies of Nash and Blore ; and in the 1920s, Queen Mary used the house of White Allom to redecorate a figure of suites.
The suites open to visitants are used chiefly for official amusement.These include Receptions and State Banquets, and it is on such occasions, when the suites are filled with flowers and thronged with officially dressed invitees and liveried retainers, that the Palace is seen at its most glorious and enforcing. But of class the Palace is besides far more than merely the London place of the Royal Family and a topographic point of munificent amusement. It has become the administrative Centre of the monarchy where, among a battalion of battles, Her Majesty receives foreign Heads of State, Commonwealth leaders and representatives of the Diplomatic Corps and conducts Investitures, and where the bulk of the Royal Houshold, dwelling of six chief Departments and a staff of about three 100 people, have their offices.
