If you’ve never visited Buckingham Palace before, you’ll be struck by the lavishness and grandeur of the State Rooms. The Picture Gallery, which serves as the Palace’s principal reception area, boasts priceless paintings by the likes of Canaletto and Rubens. Just as you are suitably impressed by the artwork here, you turn the corner into the East Gallery with even bigger artwork. George Hayter’s enormous oil depiction of Queen Victoria’s coronation is a suitable wow moment – and not the only depicture of such a ceremony you’ll experience.
Visitors will have their favourite rooms, though the curved bay windows of the Music Room with the sunshine streaming in is hard to beat. If your design tastes veer towards a ‘more is more’ aesthetic, then prepare to gasp at the White Drawing Room. Why have one chandelier when you can have five! Whenever the decision to add gold to the room was taken, they certainly forgot to say “when”. There’s a grand piano so heavily decorated with gilt and bronze, that Elton John might even call it OTT!
But, whether you’ve visited Buckingham Palace before or if this is your first time, the Coronation display is undoubtedly the irresistible centrepiece of the 2023 Summer Opening.
No sooner do you begin the tour than you find yourself at the Quadrangle, familiar from the televised arrivals and exits of incoming and outgoing Prime Ministers (of which there have been several in recent years). It’s here that you have your first taste of the Coronation up close. 20 million Brits watched the Coronation on TV with millions more viewing across the world. They would have seen Charles and Camilla travelling to Westminster Abbey in the Diamond Jubilee State Coach and you find yourself standing just feet away from this historic transport. What makes this year’s Summer Opening so fascinating is that it puts you in such close proximity to very recent history. It’s one thing seeing this coach on telly. It’s a different thing being able to look at it right in front of you and make your own observations. Ours: for a coach weighing over three tons, it seems quite ‘cosy’. You get a real sense of how disproportionally large the windows are so that the occupants can be visible but it struck us how far from roomy it is. We’ve had more spacious Ubers!