Windsor Castle is a palace and royal residence located in Windsor, in the county of Berkshire, United Kingdom.

The fortification is strongly associated with the British royal family and their successor, and embodies nearly 1000 years of architectural history.

Origins & History

The original castle was built in the 11th century after the Norman invasion of England by William the Conqueror (c.1028-1087).

Since the time of Henry I (c.1068-1135), it has been used by the reigning monarch and is the longest-occupied palace in Europe.

The luxurious state apartments of the early 19th century were described by art historian Hugh Roberts as "a magnificent and unrivaled sequence of rooms widely regarded as the finest and most comprehensive expression of later Georgian taste."

Within the castle walls is the 15th century Chapel of St. George, regarded by historian John Martin Robinson as "one of the supreme achievements of English perpendicular Gothic design."

Originally designed to protect Norman rule on the outskirts of London and to oversee a strategically important part of the River Thames, Windsor Castle was built like a castral butte, with three rooms surrounding a central mound.

Gradually replaced by stone fortifications, the castle withstood a prolonged siege during the First Barons' War in the early 13th century.

Henry III (1207-1272) built a lavish royal palace within the castle in the middle of the century, and Edward III (1312-1377) went further, rebuilding the palace to make an even grander ensemble of buildings in what would become the most expensive secular building project in the entire Middle Ages in England.

Edward III's (1312-1377) central design lasted until the Tudor Period (1485-1603), during which time Henry VIII (1491-1547) and Elizabeth I (1533-1603) made increasing use of the castle as a royal court and diplomatic entertainment center.

Windsor Castle survived the tumultuous period of the English Civil War (1642-1651), when it was used as a military headquarters for parliamentary forces and as a prison for Charles I (1600-1649).

In the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II (1630-1685) rebuilt much of Windsor Castle with the help of the architect Hugh May (1621-1684), creating a suite of extravagant Baroque interiors. After a period of neglect during the 18th century, George III (1738-1820) and George IV (1762-1830) renovated and rebuilt the palace of Charles II (1630-1685) at colossal cost, producing the current design of the State Apartments, filled with Rococo, Gothic and Baroque furniture.

Queen Victoria (1819-1901) made some minor changes to the castle, which became the royal entertainment center for much of her reign.

Windsor Castle was used as a refuge by the royal family during the Luftwaffe (1940-1941) bombing campaigns of World War II (1939-1945) and survived a fire in 1992. Yet today it's a popular tourist attraction, a place for state visits, and the preferred weekend home of Queen Elizabeth II.

Architecture

Windsor Castle occupies an area of ​​more than five hectares and combines fortification, palace and small town elements. In essence, it's a Georgian and Victorian design over a medieval structure, with Gothic touches reinvented in a modern style.

Since the 14th century the architecture of the castle has tried to create a contemporary reinterpretation of styles and traditions of the past, for which it has repeatedly imitated ancient or old-fashioned styles.

Although they have been criticized, the architecture of the castle and it's history give it a place among the best European palaces.

Middle Ward

At the heart of Windsor Castle is the Middle Ward, a bailey formed around the motte or artificial hill in the centre of the ward.

The motte is 15 m high and is made from chalk originally excavated from the surrounding ditch.

The keep, called the Round Tower, on the top of the motte is based on an original 12th century building, extended upwards in the early 19th century under architect Jeffry Wyatville (1766-1840) by 9.1 m to produce a more imposing height and silhouette.

The interior of the Round Tower was further redesigned in 1991-3 to provide additional space for the Royal Archives, an additional room being built in the space left by Wyatville's (1766-1840) originally hollow extension.

Currently the western access to the Central Campus is open and an entrance door leads to the North Terrace from this area. To the east you exit through the Norman Gate, which actually dates from the 14th century and features a high vault decorated with sculptures including medieval lion carvings and traditional symbols of majesty that form an impressive entrance to the Upper Precinct.

Wyatville (1766-1840) redesigned the exterior of the gatehouse, and the interior was later heavily converted in the 19th century for residential use.

Upper Ward

The upper ward of Windsor Castle comprises a number of major buildings enclosed by the upper bailey wall, forming a central quadrangle.

The State Apartments run along the north of the ward, with a range of buildings along the east wall, and the private royal apartments and the King George IV (1762-1830) Gate to the south, with the Edward III (1312-1377) Tower in the south-west corner.

The motte and the Round Tower form the west edge of the ward. The upper ward adjoins the North Terrace, which overlooks the River Thames, and the East Terrace, which overlooks the Home Park; both of the current terraces were constructed by Hugh May (1621-1684) in the 17th century.

Traditionally the Upper Ward was judged to be to all intents and purposes a nineteenth century creation, the image of what the early nineteenth-century thought a castle should be", as a result of the extensive redesign of the castle by Wyatville (1766-1840) under George IV (1762-1830).

The walls of the upper ward are built of Bagshot Heath stone faced on the inside with regular bricks, the gothic details in yellow Bath stone.

The buildings in the upper ward are characterised by the use of small bits of flint in the mortar for galletting, originally started at the castle in the 17th century to give stonework from disparate periods a similar appearance.

The skyline of the Upper Ward is designed to be dramatic when seen from a distance or silhouetted against the horizon, an image of tall towers and battlements influenced by the picturesque movement of the late 18th century.

State Apartments

The state apartments occupy most of the upper precinct, along the north side of the quadrangle, where modern buildings sit on the medieval foundations built by Edward III (1312-1377).

On the first floor, the layout of the western end of the State Apartments is primarily the work of architect Hugh May (1621-1684), whereas the structure on the eastern side represents Jeffry Wyatville's (1766-1840) plans.

The interior of the State Apartments was mostly designed by Wyatville in the early 19th century.

Wyatville intended each room to illustrate a particular architectural style and to display the matching furnishings and fine arts of the period. With some alterations over the years, this concept continues to dominate the apartments. Different rooms follow the Classical, Gothic and Rococo styles, together with an element of Jacobethan in places.

Many of the rooms on the eastern end of the castle had to be restored following the 1992 fire, using equivalent restoration methods, the rooms were restored so as to appear similar to their original appearance, but using modern materials and concealing modern structural improvements. These rooms were also partially redesigned at the same time to more closely match modern tastes.

Wyatville's most famous work are those rooms designed in a Rococo style. These rooms take the fluid, playful aspects of this mid-18th century artistic movement, including many original pieces of Louis XV style.

The Grand Reception Room is the most prominent of these Rococo designs, 100 feet (30 m) long and 40 feet (12 m) tall and occupying the site of Edward III's (1312-1377) great hall. The room is set off by a set of restored gobelins French tapestries. Although decorated with less gold leaf than in the 1820s, the result remains one of the greatest set-pieces of regency decoration.

The white, green and crimson Drawing Rooms include a total of 62 trophies: carved, gilded wooden panels illustrating weapons and the spoils of war, many with Masonic meanings. The delicate furnishings in these rooms, while luxurious, are more modest than the originals from the early 19th century.

Wyatville's design retains three rooms originally built by Hugh May (1621-1684) in the 17th century in partnership with the painter Antonio Verrio (1639-1707) and carver Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721).

The Queen's Presence Chamber, the Queen's Audience Chamber and the King's Dining Room are designed in a Baroque, Franco-Italian style, characterised by "gilded interiors enriched with florid murals", first introduced to England between 1648 and 1650 at Wilton House.

Verrio's paintings are steeped in medievalist allusions and classicist imagery, and the rooms were intended to display an innovative English Baroque fusion of separate arts such as architecture, painting, and sculpture.

A handful of rooms in the modern State Apartments reflect either 18th century Victorian Gothic design. The State Dining Room, for example, whose current design originates from the 1850s but which was badly damaged during the 1992 fire, is restored to its appearance in the 1920s, before the removal of some of the gilded features on the pilasters.

Some parts of the State Apartments were completely destroyed in the 1992 fire and this area was rebuilt in a style called downesian gothic, named after the architect, Giles Downes.

The new vault he designed for the St. George Hall is the largest oak wood structure built since the Middle Ages, and is decorated with bright and colorful shields that celebrate the heraldic elements of the Order of the Garter, a design that attempts to create an illusion of additional height through a gothic coffered ceiling throughout the entire ceiling.

The ground floor of the State Apartments preserves various medieval elements, such as the Great Crypt from the fourteenth century, about sixty meters long by nine meters wide, divided into thirteen sections.

When the fire broke out in 1992, this crypt had been divided into small rooms, although today it appears as a unitary space with a very high floor to make the use of the space more comfortable.

Lower Ward

The Lower Ward lies below and to the west of the Round Tower, reached through the Norman Gate. Originally largely of medieval design, most of the Lower Ward was renovated or reconstructed during the mid-Victorian period by Anthony Salvin (1799-1881) and Edward Blore (1787-1879), to form a consistently Gothic composition.

The Lower Ward holds St George's Chapel and most of the buildings associated with the Order of the Garter.

On the north side of the lower ward is St George's Chapel. This huge building is the spiritual home of the Order of the Knights of the Garter and dates from the late 15th and early 16th century, designed in the Perpendicular Gothic style.

The ornate wooden choir stalls are of 15th century design, having been restored and extended by Henry Emlyn (1729-1815) at the end of the 18th century, and are decorated with a unique set of brass plates showing the arms of the Knights of the Garter over the last six centuries.

On the west side, the chapel has a grand Victorian door and staircase, used on ceremonial occasions.

The east stained glass window is Victorian, and the oriel window to the north side of it was built by Henry VIII (1491-1547) for Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536). The vault in front of the altar houses the remains of Henry VIII (1491-1547), Jane Seymour (c.1508-1537) and Charles I (1600-1649), with Edward IV (1442-1483) buried nearby.

At the eastern end of the Chapel of St. George is the Chapel of the Virgin, originally built by Henry III (1207-1272) in the 13th century and converted into the Albert Memorial Chapel between 1863 and 1873 by George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878). Created to honor the life of Prince Albert (1819-1861), the ornamentation of this chapel is lavishly decorated with marble, stained glass and bronze carvings by Henri de Triqueti (1803-1874), Susan Durant (1827-1873), Alfred Gilbert (1854-1934) and Antonio Salviati (1816-1890).

At the west end of the lower ward is the Horseshoe Cloister, originally built in 1480, near to the chapel to house it's clergy. It houses the vicars-choral, or lay clerks of the chapel. This curved brick and timber building is said to have been designed to resemble the shape of a fetlock, one of the badges used by Edward IV (1442-1483).

Next to the horseshoe are other structures, recognizable by their perpendicular stone tracery, and which house offices, a library and the dwellings of the dean and the canons.

The interior of the tower contains a former dungeon, and the remnants of a sally port, a secret exit for the occupants in a time of siege. The upper storey contains the castle bells placed there in 1478, and the castle clock of 1689.

The French-style conical roof is a 19th-century attempt by Anthony Salvin (1799-1881) to remodel the tower in the fashion of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc's (1814-1879) recreation of Carcassonne.

On the opposite side of the chapel is a range of buildings including the lodgings of the military knights, and the residence of the governor of the military knights. These buildings originate from the 16th century and are still used by the Knights, who represent the Order of the Garter each Sunday.

On the south side of the Ward is King Henry VIII's (1491-1547), which bears the coat of arms of Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536) and forms the secondary entrance to the castle.

Park & Landscape

Windsor Castle's position on top of steep ground has meant that the castle's gardens are limited in scale. The castle gardens stretch east from the Upper Ward across a 19th-century terrace.

Windsor Castle is surrounded by extensive parkland. The immediate area stretching to the east of the castle is a 19th-century creation known as the Home Park.

The Home Park includes parkland and two working farms, along with many estate cottages mainly occupied by employees and the Frogmore estate. The Long Walk, a double lined avenue of trees, runs for 2.65 miles south of the castle, and is 240 ft wide. The original 17th century elms were replaced with alternating chestnut and plane trees. The impact of Dutch elm disease led to large-scale replanting after 1945.

Home Park adjoins the north end of the larger Windsor Park, which covers 1,900 hectares and contains some of the oldest temperate hardwood forests in Europe.