Getting to Kensington Palace
Kensington Palace has no street frontage. It stands inside Kensington Gardens, 265 acres of Royal Park, so however you arrive you finish on foot across grass. Two tube stations serve it, they are on opposite sides, and which one you want depends on what you have booked.
Queensway or High Street Kensington: which station you want
Both are a ten to fifteen minute walk and neither is closer in any way that matters. What decides it is your booking. If you are on a guided garden walk, the meeting point is almost certainly Queensway. If you have a plain entrance ticket, High Street Kensington puts you nearer the ticket office and the palace door.
| Station | Line | Walk | Come in by | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Queensway | Central | 10–15 min | Black Lion Gate, north side | Guided garden walks and tea tours |
| High Street Kensington | Circle, District | 10–15 min | Palace Gate area, south side | Entrance tickets and the palace door |
| Notting Hill Gate | Central, Circle, District | 15–20 min | North-west corner | Combining with Portobello Road |
| Lancaster Gate | Central | 20 min | North-east, via the Italian Gardens | Walking the length of the Long Water first |
Walking times measured at an unhurried pace across the park and checked against the meeting-point notes on the listings themselves, August 2026.
The walk across the park, in minutes
From Queensway you come in at the Black Lion Gate and walk south-west, and if you want to make the walk part of the day you can take the Italian Gardens and the Round Pond on the way and add about twenty minutes. From High Street Kensington you walk north up Kensington Church Street or through Palace Gate and arrive at the east front, where the Queen Victoria statue stands.
Neither route is difficult and both are entirely on made paths, but they are outdoors from end to end. Bring something for rain and shoes you would walk a mile in, and neither route will bother you.
Where the tours meet, and why it is not the palace
This catches more people than anything else on the page. Most of the guided walks meet at Queensway station and two of the operators say so in capital letters on their own listings, because visitors keep going to the palace instead and missing the start. The rule is simple: if you booked a guided walk, read the meeting point twice and go where it says.
| Meeting point | Exactly where | Which kind of trip |
|---|---|---|
| Queensway station | Outside the single entrance, by the red phone box | Most garden walks and tea tours |
| Hilton London Hyde Park | Outside the main entrance, 129 Bayswater Road, beside the Queensway exit | The VIP garden tea and the bike ride |
| Green Park station | The park gate between the Ritz and the station entrance | The three-palace walk |
| Guards Memorial | 69 Horse Guards Road | The Changing of the Guard day |
| The Ritz | 150 Piccadilly, by the phone boxes | The Westminster combination |
| The palace gate | Kensington Gardens, W8 4PX | Entrance tickets only |
Meeting points taken from each operator's own listing, captured 27 August 2026. Confirm yours on your booking confirmation before you set off.
Buses, taxis and why there is no visitor parking
Buses 9, 10, 49, 52, 70 and 452 serve the roads around the gardens, and any of them puts you within a park walk of the palace. A taxi or a private hire car can set you down on Kensington High Street or Bayswater Road but cannot drive to the door, because the palace sits inside the park.
There is no visitor car park. You are inside the Congestion Charge zone and in an ULEZ area, and street parking nearby is metered and heavily restricted. If you are driving into London anyway, park at an outer station and come in by tube — it will cost less than a morning at a Kensington meter.
Step-free arrival
Neither Queensway nor High Street Kensington offers step-free access from street to platform, which is the honest position on the Underground here. Two things fix it. The buses on Kensington High Street and Bayswater Road are all low-floor and wheelchair-accessible, and the park paths from either road are level and made up. A taxi to Palace Gate on the south side is the shortest remaining walk. The palace itself is accessible once you are in, with lifts and accessible toilets.
Finding the gate: head for the Queen Victoria statue
Once you are in the park the palace is easy to miss, because it looks like a large brick house rather than a palace and it sits behind hedging. The reliable landmark is Princess Louise's marble statue of her mother, carved in 1893, standing in a basin on the east front. Visitors say the same thing in their reviews: head for the Queen Victoria statue and the entrance is right there. The ticket office and the shop are beside it.
For what to do once you are through the door, what you see inside takes the rooms in order, plan your visit covers hours and prices, and the gardens maps the free half of the day. Kensington Palace guided tours compares every bookable trip, including which of them meet you at a station.