The Palace of Holyroodhouse, commonly referred to as Holyrood Palace, is the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland, Queen Elizabeth II. Located at the bottom of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, at the opposite end to Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace has served as the principal residence of the Kings and Queens of Scots since the 16th century, and is a setting for state occasions and official entertaining. Queen Elizabeth spends one week in residence at Holyrood Palace at the beginning of each summer, where she carries out a range of official engagements and ceremonies. The 16th-century Historic Apartments of Mary, Queen of Scots and the State Apartments, used for official and state entertaining, are open to the public throughout the year, except when members of the Royal Family are in residence.
The palace as it stands today was built between 1671–1678 in a quadrangle layout, approximately 230 feet (70 m) from north to south and 230 feet (70 m) from east to west, with the exception of the 16th-century north-west tower built by James V. Sir William Bruce designed the 3-storey plus attic classical palace for Charles II, upon the restoration of the monarchy. The principal entrance is located on the west front in a recessed 2-storey range that links the 16th-century north-west tower with a matching south-west tower with three ball-finialled, conical bell-cast roofs. The entry gateway is framed by massive coupled Roman Doric columns, with the carved Royal Arms of Scotland and an octagonal cupola with clock-face above.
The north and south fronts have symmetrical three-storey facades that rise behind to far left and right of 2-storey range with regular arrangement of bays. General repairs were completed by the architect Robert Reid between 1824–1834 that included the partial rebuilding of the south-west corner tower and refacing of the entire south front in ashlar to match that of the east. The east (rear) elevation has 17 bays with lightly superimposed pilasters of the three classical orders at each floor. The ruins of the abbey church connect to the palace on the north-east corner. For the internal quadrangle, Bruce designed a colonnaded piazza of nine arches on the north, south and east facades with pilasters, again from the three classical orders, to indicate the importance of the three main floors. The plain Doric order is used for the services at ground floor, the Ionic order is used for the state apartments on the first floor, while the elaborate Corinthian order is used for the royal apartments on the second floor.
The gardens of the palace extend to some 10 acres (4.0 ha), set within the much larger Holyrood Park. In the 16th-century a privy garden was located to the north of the palace, accessed via a wooden gallery from the north-west tower. This was removed in the 19th century when Prince Albert took an interest in the grounds, forming a new carriage drive to the north to avoid the Canongate slums and laying out the garden in its present form. A small garden building, surviving from the 16th-century, is known as Queen Mary’s Bath House, although it is not thought to have been used for bathing. The sundial to the north of the palace was carved in 1633 by John Mylne, while the fountain in the forecourt is a 19th-century replica of the 16th-century fountain at Linlithgow Palace. The ironwork gates and ornamental screens (by George Washington Browne) were erected in the 1920s, along with a statue of Edward VII (by Henry Snell Gamley), unveiled by George V in 1922.
The buildings to the west of the palace, are the 19th-century guardhouse which replaced the tenements of a debtors’ sanctuary, and adjacent to this, the former Holyrood Free Church and Duchess of Gordon’s School, built in the 1840s. These buildings were converted into the Queen’s Gallery in 2002 to display works of art from the Royal Collection. There was formerly a Keeper of Holyrood Park, and the title was held on an hereditary basis by the Earls of Haddington. This was purchased by the Crown and the office extinguished in 1843 after disputes over the Keeper’s right to allow quarrying within the Park. In 1987 the Holyrood Palace and Park were added to the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland.
