Buckingham Palace is one of the most iconic buildings on the planet. The 775-room building has served as the official London residence of British sovereigns since 1837. In spite of its massive place in pop culture and history, no current floor plan is readily available to the public.
Determined to give the public more insight into the layout of the iconic residence, researchers at HomeAdvisor set about crafting the most accurate version of the floor plan currently available on the internet. To create the floor plan, their team poured through every available photo and video of the interiors of Buckingham Palace to uncover the layout of every room. They also gathered additional information from the Royal Collection Trust and the official website of the British Royal Family, and then handed all of their intel over to architect Jelena Popovic to create floor plans for each section of the Palace. Those plans were then sent along to an architectural designer, along with high-quality images of Buckingham Palace to use as reference to create the final designs.
It's worth noting that, even though these floor-plans are accurate according to all available information about the palace, there are some areas of Buckingham Palace that remain a mystery to the public and are totally off-limits to everyone except for actual royals and official palace staff.
Take a look at this gallery for an unprecedented peek inside the Queen's London home.
The Central Block
The first thing you see when you enter Buckingham Palace, according to the HomeAdvisor floor plans, is the grand staircase, which is lined with luxurious red carpet and decorated with portraits of the royal family.
Upstairs, you'll find the Music Room (which has hosted several royal christenings, including Prince William's). And across the hallway, there's the iconic Green Drawing Room, where the Queen hosts her weekly meetings with the Prime Minister.
The Queen's Apartments
The second of the three main sections of Buckingham Palace identified by the HomeAdvisor researchers are the Queen's Apartments. Even though the palace boasts a staggering 775 rooms, the six that make up the Queen's private apartments are definitely the ones in which the monarch spends the most time.
The Queen, like pretty much every member of the British royal family, values her privacy greatly, so very few pictures from this section of the palace have been made public over the years. The only exception to the intense privacy rule in this section Buckingham Palace is the Audience Room, where the Queen meets weekly with Prime Minister and for private meetings with the Chancellor of the Exchequer before a new budget is announced. The Queen has also been known to hold audiences here with visiting heads of state who aren't on an official state visit.
The East Front
Finally, there's the East Front, which is set to undergo a major, £369 million makeover this year. This part of the palace contains the iconic Yellow Drawing Room, where the queen recorded her Christmas broadcast in 2004. There's also a gorgeous space called the Centre Room, which was formerly known as the Chinese Dining Room and is furnished in the Chinese regency style.