Kensington Palace has been collecting royal dramas since 1689, when William III bought it to escape the damp of Whitehall and promptly knocked a wall down while renovating.

The palace served as the birthplace of Queen Victoria, who learned of her accession here at the age of eighteen, still in her nightgown. More recently, it became indelibly associated with Princess Diana, who lived in apartments on the northwest side for sixteen years and whose death in 1997 transformed the palace gates into an ocean of flowers and tributes.

The building itself is deceptively modest by royal standards: a Jacobean mansion given a facelift by Christopher Wren rather than built from scratch. The sunken garden, laid out in 1908, remains one of London's loveliest formal spaces.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace Diana's Kensington years and explore the palace's role in royal succession, from Victoria's sheltered childhood to the present-day Cambridge household.