Kensington Palace

William III bought this place in 1689 because Whitehall Palace was making his asthma worse. The damp air from the Thames aggravated his lungs, and he wanted somewhere higher and drier. So he acquired a Jacobean mansion from the Earl of Nottingham and had Christopher Wren reshape it into something fit for a king. It's been a royal residence ever since, though it's never been the grandest or most glamorous — more a family home with a crown on the letterbox.

Queen Victoria was born here in 1819 and spent her entire childhood within these walls, famously learning of her accession to the throne in the early hours of 20 June 1837 when the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain arrived to tell her that her uncle William IV had died. She was eighteen years old and still in her nightgown. She moved to Buckingham Palace almost immediately.

The palace became indelibly linked with Princess Diana, who lived in Apartments 8 and 9 from her marriage to Charles in 1981 until her death in 1997. After the divorce in 1996, she chose to stay, raising William and Harry there. When she died on 31 August 1997, the palace gates became the focal point of an extraordinary public outpouring — over a million bouquets were laid, reaching five feet deep in places and stretching far into Kensington Gardens.

Today the palace houses the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection and exhibitions about its most famous residents. The Sunken Garden, originally created for Queen Mary in 1908, was redesigned in 2017 as a white garden in Diana's memory. Prince William and Catherine now live in Apartment 1A — the same wing where Victoria once played.