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Diana's Kensington Palace home reopens to public
Source: Agencies |
March 21, 2012, Wednesday
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IT'S the past home of Queen Victoria and Princess Diana, the future residence of Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge - and, it's hoped, a stop on tourists' London itineraries.
Kensington Palace - part museum, part royal abode - is reopening to the public after a two-year, 12-million-pound (US$19 million) makeover designed to give visitors a sense of what it is like to live in a centuries-old building that has witnessed both affairs of state and affairs of the heart.
Senior curator Joanna Marschner said she hopes the renovated building will shake up preconceptions about royal palaces, offering both the "big, glorious, golden rooms" that people expect, and a trove of more personal, revealing items - from Queen Victoria's baby shoes to Princess Diana's little black dress.
"I hope what we have done will engage people who have always thought 'a royal palace is not for me,'" Marschner said yesterday. "And for them to realize that these remarkable buildings - part of the DNA of the city - are for them."
Tucked into Kensington Gardens, a public park in central London, Kensington Palace is a warm red-brick contrast to gray Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth II's London home.
It was home to six British monarchs, including Victoria, who spent her childhood here, and now contains several royal "apartments" - actually Georgian houses, one of which William and Kate will move into next year.
It also has dozens of rooms that are open to the public. The public side of the palace reopens on Monday, in time for a busy tourist season that includes the queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations in June and the summer Olympics.
Kensington Palace - part museum, part royal abode - is reopening to the public after a two-year, 12-million-pound (US$19 million) makeover designed to give visitors a sense of what it is like to live in a centuries-old building that has witnessed both affairs of state and affairs of the heart.
Senior curator Joanna Marschner said she hopes the renovated building will shake up preconceptions about royal palaces, offering both the "big, glorious, golden rooms" that people expect, and a trove of more personal, revealing items - from Queen Victoria's baby shoes to Princess Diana's little black dress.
"I hope what we have done will engage people who have always thought 'a royal palace is not for me,'" Marschner said yesterday. "And for them to realize that these remarkable buildings - part of the DNA of the city - are for them."
Tucked into Kensington Gardens, a public park in central London, Kensington Palace is a warm red-brick contrast to gray Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth II's London home.
It was home to six British monarchs, including Victoria, who spent her childhood here, and now contains several royal "apartments" - actually Georgian houses, one of which William and Kate will move into next year.
It also has dozens of rooms that are open to the public. The public side of the palace reopens on Monday, in time for a busy tourist season that includes the queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations in June and the summer Olympics.
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