Kensington Palace

Welcome to Kensington Palace, a remarkable landmark nestled in the heart of Kensington Gardens that has served as a royal residence since the late seventeenth century. You are standing at a site that began its life as a much more modest Jacobean mansion known as Nottingham House, built in sixteen hundred and five. The story of the palace we see today truly began in sixteen hundred and eighty-nine, when the joint monarchs King William the Third and Queen Mary the Second purchased the house for twenty thousand pounds. They were looking for a home away from the damp, smoggy environment of Whitehall Palace because the King suffered from severe asthma. Over the next three centuries, this country retreat evolved into the grand brick residence you see now, becoming the birthplace of Queen Victoria and a home for some of the most famous figures in modern royal history. As you begin your walk, take a moment to imagine this once-rural landscape as it was before the city of London grew to surround it.