Skip Channel4 main Navigation
What is a Palace?
Inside the nave of the Crystal Palace,
built in Hyde Park for the Great
Exhibition of 1851. The building was
moved to Siddenham, south London,
when the exhibition closed and, after
being used for various purposes
including housing the studios and
transmitter for the first Baird
Television Company, burned down in
November 1936.
Photo: Sparkpics
Nor is it only in monarchies that hugely expensive and vainglorious palaces have been built. The biggest building in Europe, for example, is the Palace of Parliament in Bucharest, Romania, built by the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. At 330,000 square metres in floor space, only the Pentagon is larger anywhere in the world.
There are also many smaller, more modest palaces. In Britain, the royal family has a number that it uses at different times, and the word is also applied to bishop’s residences among others. (See list of palaces.)
From the 19th century onwards, the description 'palace' came to be applied to other buildings built on a grand scale. The Crystal Palace, so named after the huge amount of glass used in its construction, gave its name to an entire area of south London (and eventually a football club) when it was moved there after first being erected for the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851. The same happened with Alexandra Palace in north London, which was opened in 1873 and was home to the first live television broadcasts in this country in 1936.
In the late 19th and 20th centuries, first theatres and then cinemas, as well as hotels, seaside amusement arcades, casinos and even cafés, adopted the 'palace' title as they attempted – some with more success than others – to enhance their status in the burgeoning leisure and entertainment industry. Despite their efforts, however, for most people the only 'true' palaces remain those grand buildings that are, or were once, occupied by kings and queens and other important persons. The most significant of these in Britain are listed next.
Advertisement
