Castles · Tour

Changing of the Guard and Buckingham with its 16-Hectare Gardens

A guided ceremony followed by a self-guided palace, and the reason for the split is a rule rather than a cost saving: no guide is allowed to speak inside Buckingham Palace. Your guide sets the visit up outside, then hands you over at the door with the official Palace Audio Tour. The morning starts with the Changing of the Guard. The Old Guard hands duty to the New Guard, in red uniforms and bearskin hats, marching in time to the band. The group is a small one and the guide places you where the view is, explaining each stage as it happens. On the way, St James's Palace, built on the site of an old leper hospital and the oldest royal palace in the UK, seen from outside, and Clarence House, the London residence of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. Inside the palace you take the State Rooms at your own pace: gifts from heads of state, the furnishings, the artworks. The Palace Gardens run to 16 hectares and are where the garden parties are held. The State Rooms open to the public for just two months a year, in August and September, and tickets go quickly. Meet by the equestrian statue of Edward VII, Waterloo Place, London SW1Y 5ER. By tube: Piccadilly Circus, exit No. 3 onto Regent Street/St James's, then south down Regent Street towards St James's Park. Waterloo Place is at the end of it.