A palace is a big house, usually the home of a king or an emperor. It can also be the home of the head of state or another high-ranking official. These beautiful palaces are some of the world’s most well-known buildings. Once the homes of kings and emperors, these amazing monuments are now popular places for tourists to visit. Here is a list of the world’s top 10 most lovely royal palaces.
Pena National Palace
The Pena National Palace in Portugal is a Romanticist palace. King Ferdinand II built it in 1842. The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 badly damaged a monastery that the palace was built on top of. With its original red and yellow colors brought back to life, the Pena National Palace is now the most visited place in Portugal.
Mysore Palace
Amba Vilas Palace is another name for it. It is a palace in the city of Mysore, which is in the southern part of India. It is where the Wodeyars, who used to be the royal family of Mysore, live now. There are also two durbar halls (ceremonial meeting halls of the royal court). People often call Mysore the City of Palaces. India has many old palaces, but Mysore Palace is the most well-known one.
Schonbrunn Palace
One of the country’s most important cultural landmarks. Since the 1960s, it has been one of Vienna’s most popular tourist spots. Schonbrunn Palace is a former summer palace for the Austrian emperors. It has 1,441 rooms and was built in the Rococo style. Emperor Leopold, I asked for the palace to be built between 1696 and 1712. The Palace Park has a lot to see, like the Privy Garden, the oldest zoo in the world, the Gloriette, and a maze and labyrinth, a marble summerhouse on top of a 60-meter-high hill.
Summer Palace
Beijing, China, has a palace called the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace is mostly made up of Longevity Hill and Kunming Lake. It is 2.9 square kilometers, and three-quarters of that are water. China’s imperial rulers came here in the summer to get away from the “Forbidden City” and spend time in this place. In 1750, the gardens got a big makeover that copied the styles of palaces and gardens from all over China. The lake in Kunming was made bigger to look like the West Lake in Hangzhou.
Palace of Versailles
The Palace of Versailles is a royal chateau in the city of Versailles in France called Île-de-France. Louis XIII built Versailles in 1624 as a place for hunters to stay. Versailles was just a small town in the countryside when the chateau was built. But it is a wealthy neighborhood of Paris, about 20 kilometers southwest of the capital of France. It is a popular place for tourists and is now a museum.
Château de Chambord
The royal Chateau de Chambord is in Loir-et-Cher, France, in Chambord. It is one of the most famous chateaux in the world because of its unique French Renaissance architecture, which combines traditional medieval French forms with traditional Renaissance structures. King Francois, I built the building. Even though the flooding hurt the grounds in June 2016, the chateau was not. People now think that the chateau is the most beautiful palace. It is open to everyone, and millions go there yearly.
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace, which used to be called Buckingham House, is where the British monarch lives and works. The Buckingham Palace is in the City of Westminster. It is where state events and royal hospitality take place. It has been the center of attention for the British people in both times of happiness and trouble.
The palace has a large park-like garden and 775 rooms. With its lake, the garden is London’s biggest private garden. The staterooms, used for official and state events, are open to the public for most of August and September and some days in the winter and spring.
Alhambra
Alhambra is a palace and fortress complex in Andalusia, Spain. It is in the city of Granada. It was built as a fortress in 889, but Yusuf I, the Sultan of Granada, changed it into a royal palace in 1333. The Nasrid dynasty, Spain’s last group of Muslim rulers, built the Islamic palaces in the Alhambra. After the Reyes Católicos took back control of the country in 1492, they used some parts of it. Alhambra is now the most popular place in Spain, and many people visit Granada to see it.
Potala Palace
The Potala Palace is in the Chinese city of Lhasa, in the Tibet Autonomous Region. The Potala Palace is located on Marpo Ri hill, 130 meters above the Lhasa valley. It rises another 170 meters and is the tallest building in Tibet.
Even though there was already a palace here in the 7th century, the Potrang Karpo, or White Palace, was started in 1645 during the rule of the fifth Dalai Lama. It was finished in 1648. Between 1690 and 1694, the Potrang Marpo, also called the Red Palace, was built. The Dalai Lama lived in the Potala Palace until the 14th Dalai Lama fled in 1959 when China invaded Tibet.
Forbidden City
It is one of the world’s most beautiful royal palaces. From the termination of the Ming Dynasty to the termination of the Qing Dynasty, it was the palace of the Chinese emperor. It is in the middle of Beijing, China, and the Palace Museum is now there. It was the home of Chinese emperors and their families for almost 500 years.
It was also the political and ceremonial center of the Chinese government during that time. There are 980 buildings in the complex, which is 720,000 square meters in size. The palace complex is a good example of traditional Chinese palatial architecture, and it has affected culture and architecture in East Asia and other places.
