Buckingham Palace

Possibly the first house on the site, built around 1624 by William Blake, was extended from 1633 by George Goring into Goring House. Goring House burned down in 1674 and was rebuilt the following year as Arlington House for Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington. John Sheffield acquired the lease in 1698 and, after becoming Duke of Buckingham and Normanby, had Buckingham House built there in 1703 to a design by William Winde — a three-storey central block flanked by two service wings.

Charles Sheffield, Buckingham's illegitimate son, sold the house to George III in 1761 for £21,000 as a private retreat for Queen Charlotte; it became known as the Queen's House, and fourteen of her fifteen children were born there. St James's Palace remained the official royal residence, but the name "Buckingham Palace" was already in use by 1791.

After his accession in 1820, George IV had architect John Nash rework the modest house into a palace with a French neoclassical façade; costs spiralled, and by 1829 Nash was removed. William IV, who succeeded in 1830, had Edward Blore finish the work but never moved in, preferring Clarence House; after the Palace of Westminster burned down in 1834, he offered Buckingham Palace as a new home for Parliament, which was declined.

Buckingham Palace became the London residence of the British monarch when Queen Victoria acceded in June 1837, the first monarch to live there. The new palace was ill-equipped, its chimneys smoking so badly the fires often had to be banked, and its ventilation so poor the interior smelled foul; Prince Albert, after marrying Victoria in 1840, reorganised the household and had the faults corrected within the year. By 1847 the palace was too small for their growing family, and a new east wing by Blore, built by Thomas Cubitt, enclosed the central quadrangle in 1847–1849, funded by the 1850 sale of Brighton Pavilion. Its East Front gave the palace the balcony used for Trooping the Colour.

Widowed in 1861, Victoria withdrew to Windsor, Balmoral and Osborne, and the palace stood shuttered for most of the year; in 1864 someone pinned a note to its fence reading "These commanding premises to be let or sold, in consequence of the late occupant's declining business." Edward VII, who succeeded in 1901, redecorated the state rooms in the Belle Époque cream-and-gold scheme they still carry.

In 1913, under George V, Aston Webb refaced Blore's 1850 East Front in Portland stone as a backdrop to the new Victoria Memorial. During the First World War the palace escaped damage, though George V imposed rationing and, urged by David Lloyd George, locked the wine cellars to set an example of abstinence.

The palace was bombed nine times in the Second World War; the worst strike destroyed the palace chapel in 1940 while George VI and Queen Elizabeth were inside, and newsreels of them inspecting the damage played in cinemas nationwide. The Queen was reported to have said, "I'm glad we have been bombed. Now I can look the East End in the face." On 15 September 1940, RAF pilot Ray Holmes, out of ammunition, rammed a German bomber he believed was heading for the palace and bailed out safely; it crashed into the forecourt of Victoria station. On VE Day, 8 May 1945, the King, Queen and princesses appeared on the balcony before crowds in the Mall, and the palace was later restored by John Mowlem & Co.

The King's Gallery, built on the destroyed chapel's site, opened in 1962 to display Royal Collection works, and the palace was designated a Grade I listed building in 1970. In 1968, courtier Charles Tryon sought to exempt the palace from the new Race Relations Act, telling civil servants it did not hire people of colour for clerical jobs, only as domestic servants; the exemption sent complaints of racism within the household to the Home Secretary rather than the courts. Since 1993 the state rooms have opened to the public each summer; in the year to March 2025 the palace and King's Gallery drew 683,000 and 174,000 visitors respectively.

The palace is owned by the reigning monarch in right of the Crown rather than as personal property, and the UK government maintains it in exchange for the profits of the Crown Estate. A ten-year, £369 million programme of rewiring, replumbing and roof repair was approved in November 2016 and backed by the House of Commons in 2017. Charles III, who acceded in 2022, lives at nearby Clarence House but continues to use Buckingham Palace as the monarchy's administrative headquarters.