WINDSOR CASTLE, Great Britain
Windsor Castle is an official residence of The Queen and the largest occupied castle in the world. A royal palace and fortress for over 900 years, the Castle remains a working palace today. Visitors can walk around the State Apartments, extensive suites of rooms at the heart of the working palace; for part of the year visitors can also see the Semi State rooms, which are some of the most splendid interiors in the castle. They are furnished with treasures from the Royal Collection including paintings by Holbein, Rubens, Van Dyck and Lawrence, fine tapestries and porcelain, sculpture and armour.
Within the Castle complex there are many additional attractions. In the Drawings Gallery regular exhibitions of treasures from the Royal Library are mounted. Another popular feature is the Queen Mary's Dolls' House, a miniature mansion built to perfection. The fourteenth-century St. George's Chapel is the burial place of ten sovereigns, home of the Order of the Garter, and setting for many royal weddings. Nearby on the Windsor Estate is Frogmore House, an attractive country residence with strong associations to three queens - Queen Charlotte, Queen Victoria and Queen Mary.
In celebration of the Golden Jubilee of Her Majesty The Queen, a new landscape garden has been created by the designer and Chelsea Gold Medallist Tom Stuart-Smith. The garden, the first to be made at the Castle since the 1820s, transforms the visitor entrance and provides a setting for band concerts throughout the year. The informal design takes its inspiration from Windsor's historic parkland landscape and the picturesque character of the Castle, introduced by the architect Sir Jeffry Wyatville for George IV in the 1820s.
There has been a castle at Windsor for over 900 years. William the Conqueror chose the site, high above the River Thames and on the edge of a Saxon hunting ground. It was a day's march from the Tower of London and intended to guard the western approaches to the capital. Since those early days Windsor Castle has been inhabited continuously and improved upon by successive sovereigns. Some were great builders, strengthening the Castle against uprising and rebellion; others, living in more peaceful times, created a palatial royal residence.
Nine centuries after its foundation, the castle continues to perform its prime role as one of The Queen's official residences. Pivotal to this role are the State Apartments, which are the formal rooms used for Court ceremonial and State and official occasions. They range from the smaller intimate rooms of Charles II's Apartments to the vast area of the Waterloo Chamber, built to commemorate the famous victory over Napoleon in 1815.
Windsor Castle provides a step back into history, and within its precincts stands St George's Chapel, the resting place of ten sovereigns. Founded by Edward IV in 1475 and completed by Henry VIII, the Chapel is dedicated to the patron saint of the Order of the Garter, Britain's highest Order of Chivalry, and ranks among the finest examples of late medieval architecture in the United Kingdom.
In recent history, one event stands out. On 20 November 1992 a fire broke out in Windsor Castle. It began in the Private Chapel when a spotlight came into contact with a curtain over a prolonged period and ignited the material. It took 15 hours and a million and a half gallons of water to put out the blaze. Nine principal rooms and over 100 other rooms over an area of 9,000 square metres were damaged or destroyed by the fire, approximately one-fifth of the Castle area.
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