King of the castles: a guide to royal London, one palace at a time

It takes little more than an hour to stroll between the official London residence of the Prince and Princess of Wales; the official London residence of the King; the Houses of Parliament and the royal church where King Charles III will be crowned on Saturday, May 6. But the journey takes you across Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Green Park and St James's Park, and - trust me - you'll stop so often along the way that you'll need to make a day of it.

But first...

Any journey into the history of the monarchy should begin about 35 kilometres west of central London in the county of Berkshire, where the magnificent Windsor Castle dominates and defines the town of Windsor.

Now I'm a republican, but Windsor Castle is one of my favourite places in England, in what must be the royalest borough in Britain, where the names of the most prominent town-centre pubs are stripped from the royal family tree. The Queen Charlotte, the Duchess of Cambridge, the Prince Albert, the Queen Victoria and the Prince Arthur together share streets south of the River Thames with an eyesore of souvenir shops stuffed with commemorative kitchenware. There are royal reminders everywhere: even the local McDonald's is guarded by brightly painted statues of Grenadier Guards rather than the customary sinister clown.

Towering above all the tourist tat is the longest continually occupied castle in the world, built in the 11th century by William the Conqueror and still used as a weekend residence by Elizabeth II in the months before her death in September 2022.

The castle is curiously badly signposted, perhaps under the assumption that people will be able to find it just by looking up, but it can be easy for first-timers to lose their way in Windsor - particularly as the town is served by two similarly named railway stations, Windsor and Eton Central (on the branch line from Slough) and Windsor and Eton Riverside (for direct trains to Waterloo), each about 10 minutes walk from the castle.

Long queues of coach-tour passengers wait outside the walls for the castle to open at 10am but, outside of the summer peak season, individual tourists join a much shorter line at the main gate. I made my way through the airport-style security in about five minutes and was startled to find myself standing alone by the tomb of Elizabeth II only five minutes later.

Elizabeth is buried in King George VI Memorial Chapel, which she commissioned as a resting place for her father inside the 14th-century St George's Chapel. Given the barely paralleled pomp of her state funeral, her memorial seems deliberately understated: a single ledger shared by George VI and his wife Elizabeth (latterly known as the Queen Mother) and the Queen and her husband Philip.

On my most recent visit, months after the death of Elizabeth II, the audio guide still spoke of the late Queen in the present tense. Nor had the guidebooks been updated - although the gift shops in town were already acned with souvenir fridge magnets. At the castle, the only nod to her passing was a scrappy video on an unimposing screen.

Many previous monarchs are entombed beneath the vaulted ceilings of the main chapel, a place of wonder enriched by impossibly ornate 15th-century timberwork and breathtaking stained-glass windows. There is also a collection of extravagant Renaissance paintings; the predictably sizeable field armour of King Henry VIII (I love that kind of stuff); and a room full of portraits of a faintly shifty-looking King Charles I by Anthony van Dyck.

Regent after regent made additions to Windsor Castle, leaving behind marvellous feats of artisan stonework, knowing they were building lasting memorials to themselves. The State Apartments showcase a treasury of breastplates, lances and regal banners, as well as sword upon sword, pikes and halberds and tremendously elaborate musketry.

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The State Apartments continue to be used by the Royal Family for events, and knighthoods and other honours are still bestowed in the Grand Reception Room, under dazzling, pendulous chandeliers hanging from elaborate plaster ceilings.

For a break from sightseeing, the vaulted Undercroft Café - once the castle's main wine cellar - offers "Queen food" such as cakes and scones, as well as coronation chicken sandwiches. And it's a pleasure just to walk around the castle walls, surveying the contrasts of the kingdom beyond the battlements. Facing north, you can see swans and houseboats on the Thames then views to infamously unlovely Slough. Had the Queen wanted to relive both happier times on the royal yacht Britannia and the opening credits of The Office, she could have done so from Windsor Castle.

It's all very stirring.

Meanwhile back in Windsor Town, in a bus shelter at the foot of Castle Hill, a ragged homeless man lay wrapped in a filthy sleeping bag, and I felt as if he was making a silent, unsubtle point - but perhaps that was just the republican in me, looking for a reason to grumble.

One striking thing about Kensington Palace is its closeness to busy Bayswater Road - it really is a big house in the heart of Kensington. It's easy to understand complaints that its best-loved former resident, Princess Diana, lived in a goldfish bowl.

Another unmissable fact about the areas open to visitors is the hypermasculine, Neoclassical tastelessness of many of the interiors.

And it can be a bit difficult to admire the opulence of the lifestyle of the 19th-century royal family at a time when poor people could be hung - or, worse, transported to Australia - for stealing a loaf of bread. A reconstruction of the young Victoria's playroom is enlivened by the presence of a hologram puppy. A newspaper headline reproduced on the wall declares "The lovely little Princess ... is the picture of health, intelligence and good humour". You would hope so.

Untypically, the more modern exhibits at Kensington Palace are the most enjoyable. There's a display of Dorothy Wilding's classic 1952 photo shoot of the newly crowned Elizabeth II that yielded the first version of the Queen's bust seen on coins, stamps and banknotes throughout the Commonwealth, and an interesting film about the efforts of various photographers to capture a defining portrait of Charles.

The palace stands at the west end of Kensington Park Gardens, overlooking a round pond called Round Pond. The pond is home to swans, ducks and seagulls, and the surrounding grounds crawl with twitching, darting grey squirrels.

Squirrels also circle the nearby Diana Memorial Playground and Diana Memorial Fountain, and the staggeringly ornate 54-metre-high Albert Memorial.

The Serpentine Lake separates Kensington Gardens from Hyde Park. On either side of the lake sit Serpentine galleries with exhibitions of contemporary art that are free to enter. The Serpentine Bar and Kitchen on the lake's eastern edge has lake views, coffee, cakes and pizza.

Across the road from Hyde Park Corner, at the point where Hyde Park all but meets Green Park, stands England's most impressive roundabout - the setting for the colossal Wellington Arch. Other monuments nearby include the Australian War Memorial, London.

Then begins Buckingham Palace Garden and a short stroll to the palace itself, a building that is so authoritative and commanding that it makes everything around it seem less real. It's the modern motor traffic that appears anachronistic, rather than the stately Victorian facade of the palace.

Many tourists plan their visit to coincide with the Changing of the King's Guard, because it's (a) a colourful spectacle; and (b) free to watch. The ceremony takes place in the Palace Forecourt at 10:45am every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. (Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, it's held at Windsor Castle, where the march begins at 11am and visitors can stand much closer to the guardsmen.)

While the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace is a dramatic martial and musical set piece, even on the days when there is no Changing of the Guard, there's a sort of changing-of-position of the guards, when soldiers on opposite sides of Buckingham Gate stamp around a bit then perform an exercise in military ballet, pacing away from their billets and repeatedly marching towards each other, then turning and marching back, looking for all the world like they're trying to raise the step count on their Fitbits.

In 2023, tours of the palace's State Rooms operate daily from July 14 to September 24, and Friday to Sunday the rest of the year.

From Buckingham Palace, the pilgrim peregrinates through St James's Park to Horse Guards Parade and the Household Cavalry Museum, then bears right towards Downing Street and the Palace of Westminster.

The site of the Palace of Westminster, now the Houses of Parliament, was a seat of British monarchs perhaps as far back as King Canute in the 11th century. Now the wonderful Gothic Revival complex on the Thames is an international symbol of democratic government and brown sauce. At one corner stands the most famous clocktower in the world, popularly known as Big Ben, which was renamed the Elizabeth Tower in 2012 - although you might be hard-pressed to find anybody who uses that name.

At the edge of the Palace of Westminster is Westminster Abbey, a museum, a sculpture gallery, an art gallery, an encyclopedia of imperial history (just read the inscriptions on the various monuments, memorials and tombs) and, above all, a masterpiece of medieval architecture. It is also the church where King Charles III will receive St Edward's Crown from the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Near the doors of the abbey sits the 700-year-old timber Coronation Chair, which was built to hold the Stone of Scone, originally associated with the coronation of Scottish kings but brought to England when Edward I invaded Scotland. The stone was returned to Scotland in 1996 but it will be back in place when the chair becomes the centrepiece of the ceremony on May 6, to signify that Charles III is also King of Scotland.

Sadly, I didn't come across any object that might embody his status as King of Australia.

But then, perhaps he won't be for long.

(That was my inner republican, carping again.)

Explore more: visit royal.uk

The writer visited Windsor Castle from the comfortable and convenient London Heathrow Marriott Hotel, which is only a 20-minute drive from Windsor. Rooms start at about $195 per night. marriott.com

For the writer's trip from Kensington Palace to Westminster Abbey, he stayed at the Hilton London Olympia, a journeyman property with no executive lounge but a surprisingly good second-floor bar and rates that start as low as about $170 a night (even less in low season). hilton.com