Buckingham Palace [antikvár]

BUCKINGHAM PALACEOlwen HedleySINCE the Norman Conquest four great London palaces, each in turn, have served as the seat of majesty. Westminster, founded by the last Saxon king, Edward the Confessor, yielded its authority to Whitehall in King Henry VIU's reign, and Whitehall to St. James's a century and a half later. In 1762 King George III's consort, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, was granted Buckingham House as her private home, and on this mansion, the choice of a young and perceptive queen, the full sov-ereign power of the Crown ultimately devolved.Buckingham Palace today offers no obvious clues to its ancestry. Such as remain are embodied in the State Apartments on the West Front, which, like the gardens beyond, do not ordinarily come within public surveillance. It is the East Front with which the eyes of the world are familiar, and this is a later addition, masking the Quadrangle and Grand Entrance, but presenting a fagade of august dignity to the approach along the Mali and St. James's Park. The north and south wings which itfacing page: The Grand Staircase. Nash's marble staircase, ascending from the south end of the Grand Hall to the State Apartments, has gilt bronze balustrading by Samuel Parker, who also made the Corinthian capitals of the columns in the Grand Hall. On either side of the doorway to the Guard Chamber are portraits of William IV and Queen Adelaide.right: The middle window of the Centre Room. On occasions of national rejoicing, the royal family step through this window on to the balcony of the East Front to acknowledge the acclamations of crowds gathered before the palace. The newly completed balcony was first used by Queen Victoria in 1854 when she watched the last Guards bat-talion march out of the courtyard before leaving for the Crimea.unités represent the original plan of the palace, which was built around three sides of a courtyard. Tradition maintains a tenuous but pleasing domestic trend on the north side, where the Private Apartments occupy the first floor, with windows over-looking Green Park. It was in the north wing of old Buckingham House that Queen Charlotte's children grew up, and here she had some of her private rooms and her flower garden.The earlier historical background of the palace places its site on the