How Buckingham Palace Has Changed During Queen Elizabeth II’s Reign

Little is known about the rooms that are occupied by the family, since they are off-limits to the intruding press and scarce information about them has leaked out over the queen’s 70 years on the throne. That being said, the state rooms—which have been open to the public since 1993, initially to raise money to repair a fire-damaged Windsor Castle—have been continually primped, fluffed, and improved during her reign, since over 15 million tourists a year expect to see a perfect palace. Walls are repainted. Architectural details, such as the faux lapis lazuli columns in the Music Room, are restored. Fabric is replaced as it begins to fade and fray. Carpets are repaired. The effect, though, remains much as Edward VII left it: grand, glimmering, and regal. Even photographs of the White Drawing Room, one of Edward VII’s finest creations, show that the space, flamboyantly gilded, bristling with decorative plasterwork, and hung with lemon yellow curtains, hasn’t really changed at all, since the 1910s.

So what has Queen Elizabeth II put her hand to at Buckingham Palace? No great projects like her predecessors, though she and her late husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, are responsible for the jewel-like Queen’s Gallery. A public exhibition space dedicated to art and objects from the Royal Collection, it was created in 1962 by the royal couple, replacing an 1840s chapel—originally built as a conservatory in 1831—that had been bombed during World War II and which still remained in ruins. This gallery included walls draped and stretched with a fabric of the queen’s choice, described by journalist Muriel Bowen in Tatler as “a specially woven biscuit colour cotton-rayon mixture”. As Bowen archly reported, the “small and charmingly intimate gallery” was also “the only part of the Palace to be air-conditioned, a concession to the pictures and not to the hordes of American tourists expected.”

Since then, the Queen’s Gallery has been altered, enlarged, and boldly classicized in the late 1990s by architects John Simpson & Partners, the work being completed just in time for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, in 2002. Visitors to London for the Platinum Jubilee can pass through the structure’s magnificent Doric porch to take the measure of Her Majesty’s architectural commission as well as revel in the surprising breadth of the Royal Collection. Currently on display is “Japan: Courts and Culture,” which highlights Asian treasures ranging from samurai armor given to James I as a diplomatic gift to an exquisite gold-and-black lacquer box, made around 1900, that Japanese emperor Hirohito sent to the queen as a coronation present, in 1953.