Hours, prices and access verified by the Kensington Palace Tours team — last checked August 27, 2026
The two fronts, the rooms that carry the visit, the jewels, and the garden below
the Cradle Walk. Every frame was photographed at the palace or in the park around it.
The south front of Kensington Palace, its pedimented centre rising over the glazed visitor entrance with clipped yew cones on the lawn in frontPrincess Louise's marble statue of Queen Victoria standing in its basin on the east front of Kensington Palace, the brick ranges running away on both sidesThe Queen Victoria statue from the front, sceptre in hand on its carved stone plinth, with the palace and clipped hedging behind itA visitor wearing the palace's audio-guide headset in the King's Gallery, standing before Old Master paintings hung on crimson damask beside a marble chimneypieceThe 1694 wind dial above the King's Gallery chimneypiece at Kensington Palace, its painted map of north-western Europe set in a gilded frame under a broken pedimentA green harpsichord in the King's Gallery with a costumed interpreter in an eighteenth-century red coat beside it, the long room stretching away past marble bustsA lone visitor looking up at a large Old Master painting in the King's Gallery, the crimson damask running the length of the wall between panelled doorsThe King's Grand Staircase at Kensington Palace, William Kent's painted courtiers leaning over their trompe-l'oeil balustrade above Tijou's wrought-iron banisterCharles Clay's musical clock in its mahogany and gilt case, lit at the centre of the Cupola Room beneath Kent's painted architectureA chair of state at Kensington Palace under its crimson damask canopy, the gilded royal arms with lion and unicorn mounted on the wall aboveThe bedroom in which Queen Victoria was born, presented with a satinwood bed under a green half-tester and a curtained cot standing beside itThe Jewel Room display at Kensington Palace showing Queen Victoria's emerald tiara, necklace, earrings and brooch above a painted portrait of the young queenA diamond circlet lit in its case in the Jewel Room, graduated pear-cut stones set in scrollwork above a band of smaller brilliantsA large cutaway model of Kensington Palace on a table, two furnished rooms lit inside the brick south frontIan Rank-Broadley's bronze of Diana, Princess of Wales, with three children beside her, standing on its plinth in the Sunken Garden between clipped hedgesThe Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace seen across its lily-covered pool, the Diana statue small at the far end between the pleached limes of the Cradle Walk
Three worth pausing on
The King's Gallery appears more than once. One of those frames holds the best detail in the
building: a wind dial made for William III in 1694, set above the chimneypiece in a gilded frame.
Its pointer is still driven by rods running up to a vane on the roof. The face is a painted map
of north-western Europe, and it tells you which way the wind is blowing over Kensington at the
moment you look at it.
The King's Grand Staircase is the other. Kent filled its walls with George I's own household
— pages, yeomen, a Turkish groom, the King's Polish page. They lean over a painted
balustrade to watch you climb. It is the reason the staircase, rather than any state room, is the
photograph most visitors take first.
The frame of the Queen Victoria statue is the practical one. First-time visitors all say the
same thing about finding the entrance: head for the statue. Princess Louise carved her mother in
1893 and set her on the east front. She is the landmark the gate is measured from.
