Tourists visiting Buckingham Palace will be able to walk through its famous entrance gates and across the courtyard for the first time, just as guests do at official royal events.
Visitors who pay to enter the London monument from next year will have the opportunity to enter in the same way as those attending garden parties or royal receptions.
It comes as the Royal Collection Trust (RCT), which manages the site’s public openings, is also opening its east wing outside the traditional summer tourist season.
The 2025 plan follows the success of this year’s summer opening, when it welcomed record numbers of visitors and allowed access to the wing, which includes the palace’s famous central balcony, for the first time since its construction 175 years ago.
King Charles III is known to want to give people greater access to royal buildings; a report when Queen Elizabeth II was still alive said she hoped to transform them from “private spaces to public places” as monarch.
Delicate cleaning of a Chinese pagoda in the east wing of Buckingham Palace in June
Preparations take place in the Central Room in the east wing of Buckingham Palace in June.
Members of Royal Collection Trust staff walk along the main corridor in the east wing
The 90-minute guided tours, running from January to May and costing £90, will offer a deeper look at the history of the East Wing Rooms at a time when the palace is not usually open to the public.
The royal residence, which serves as the seat of the monarchy, is undergoing a £369 million refurbishment to upgrade the palace’s electrical wiring, plumbing and heating system over ten years.
A working palace, it is the King’s official residence in London and where he holds his audiences and receptions.
But Charles’s favorite overnight stay in the capital remains his nearby home, Clarence House.
Guided tours of the East Wing will be available Fridays through Mondays from mid-January to the end of May.
For the first time, visitors will be able to enter through the main doors of the palace and cross the courtyard, just as guests do at official royal events.
Further details and ticket sale dates will be announced in due course.
The east wing of the palace was built between 1847 and 1849 to house Queen Victoria’s growing family, and the development included the open horseshoe-shaped former royal residence.
George IV’s opulent oriental-style seaside palace, Brighton’s Royal Pavilion, was sold to fund construction work and its contents, some of the finest ceramics and furniture from the Royal Collection, were moved to the East Wing and inspired the theme China. decoration of its main rooms.
They were transported from Brighton in 143 consignments on artillery carts, and although some items were lent to the pavilion, important items, such as 42 fireplaces, were incorporated into Buckingham Palace along with tables, chairs, clocks and vases.
Guided tours of the East Wing, which also include the palace’s state rooms, will take visitors along much of the 240-foot-long main corridor and will include the Yellow Room and the central room behind the balcony.
Preparations in the Yellow Room in the east wing of Buckingham Palace in June
Preparations take place in the Central Room in the east wing of Buckingham Palace in June.
Preparations in the Yellow Room in the east wing of Buckingham Palace in June
The yellow drawing room features an oriental-style fireplace from George’s coastal pleasure palace, an elaborate gold curtain rod and even some of the pavilion’s wallpaper that Queen Mary discovered in storage and hung at her request.
Victoria and her consort furnished the hall with chairs, side tables, large pagodas and Chinese porcelain, including an incense burner in the shape of a Buddha.
Highlights of the central hall include a recently restored crystal chandelier, in the shape of a lotus flower, and two 18th-century Chinese imperial silk wall tapestries, gifted to Victoria by Guangxu, Emperor of China, with occasion of its Diamond Jubilee in 1897.
The public will not be able to go out to the balcony although it will have views of The Mall.
Guided tours of the palace’s State Rooms, which do not include the east wing, are already offered at the palace during the winter months of November to January, with some tours in late spring and around Easter time .
But additional tours of the east wing will be seen as a shift toward greater public access to the historic building year-round.
People outside the gates of Buckingham Palace, which will open for paying tourists in 2025
The gates of Buckingham Palace were boarded up in March after a car crashed into them.
Guests pass through the famous gates of Buckingham Palace for a garden party on July 23, 1931.
Meanwhile, tickets go on sale today for the traditional summer opening of the palace’s State Rooms, from mid-July to the end of September, and of the East Wing in July and August.
And new £1 tickets to Windsor Castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse for 2025 have been announced.
The reduced entry fee will be available between January and April for people receiving universal credit and certain other benefits in a bid to make royal residences more welcoming and inclusive for all.
Those eligible can bring up to five members of their household to explore Berkshire Castle or Edinburgh Palace for £1 each.
Guided tours of St James’s Palace in London, including a view of the Chapel Royal, where Prince George and Prince Louis were baptised, will also be available on selected weekends in spring 2025, following trial openings several years ago.
Tickets and visitor information can be found at rct.uk.
