8 Palaces to explore in United Kingdom
The United Kingdom consists of four constituent countries: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It is the sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It has a high-income economy and has a very high Human Development Index rating, ranking 14th in the world. It was the world's first industrialised country and the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Symbol and home of the monarchy of the United Kingdom. The palace has 775 rooms, and the garden is the largest private garden in London. The staterooms, used for official and state entertaining, are open to the public each year for most of August and September and on some days in winter and spring.
Cawdor Castle is set amid gardens. The castle is built around a 15th-century tower house, with substantial additions in later centuries. The castle is best known for its literary connection to William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth, in which the title character is made "Thane of Cawdor". However, the story is highly fictionalised, and the castle itself, which is never directly referred to in Macbeth, was built many years after the life of the 11th-century King Macbeth.
Dunrobin Castle is a stately home in Sutherland, and the family seat of the Earl of Sutherland and the Clan Sutherland. Dunrobin's origins lie in the Middle Ages, but most of the present building and the gardens were added by Sir Charles Barry between 1835 and 1850. Some of the original building is visible in the interior courtyard, despite a number of expansions and alterations that made it the largest house in the north of Scotland. After being used as a boarding school for seven years, it is
Dunvegan castle is built on an elevated rock overlooking an inlet on the eastern shore of Lake Dunvegan. The castle was first built in the 13th century and developed piecemeal over the centuries. In the 19th century the whole castle was remodelled in a mock-medieval style. It is the seat of the MacLeod of MacLeod, chief of the Clan MacLeod.
Along with St James' Palace, it is one of only two surviving palaces out of the many the King Henry VIII owned. The palace has two distinct contrasting architectural styles, domestic Tudor and Baroque. It currently is open to the public displaying many of its original furnitures still in their original position, in addition to the works of art from the Royal Collection.
Meeting place for the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Contains over 1,100 rooms organised symmetrically around two series of courtyards and which has a floor area of 112,476 m2 (1,210,680 sq ft). Part of the New Palace's area of 3.24 hectares (8 acres) was reclaimed from the River Thames, which is the setting of its nearly 300-metre long (980 ft) facade, called the River Front.
Historic castle founded towards the end of 1066. A grand palace early in its history, the Tower has served variously as an armoury, a treasury, a menagerie, the home of the Royal Mint, a public record office, and the home of the Crown Jewels of England. The Tower is a complex of several buildings set within two concentric rings of defensive walls and a moat.