Inside the Most Important Room in Buckingham Palace

There are 775 rooms in Buckingham Palace. 188 staff bedrooms, 92 offices, 78 bathrooms, 52 royal and guest bedrooms, and 19 state rooms. Of all of them, one is perhaps the most important: the 1844 Room.

It’s where Queen Elizabeth and the royal family often receive their most distinguished visitors, from the Obamas, to President Xi Jinping of China, to Angelina Jolie. The room can be set for an audience, for a privy council meeting, or even a meal—just this week, the Queen held a lunch for a varied group including the Duke of York, architect Sir David Adjaye, and Felicity Aston, the first woman to cross Antarctica solo. It’s also well-known to the general public: The Queen’s annual Christmas speech is sometimes filmed there.

It’s called “The 1844 Room” because, well, the year 1844. That’s when the space received Russian Tsar Nicholas I, a guest so grand that his portrait once hung on its walls. (The palace also has an “1855 Room,” named after the state visit of Napoleon III.)

The interior is resplendent: according to Rizzoli’s Buckingham Palace: The Interiors, it has 19th century blue and gold silk upholstered furniture by Morel & Seddon, a portrait of King George IV and Frederick, Duke of York as children, and a neoclassical desk by famous cabinet maker David Roentgen from 1820. The walls are adorned with a blush-hued wallpaper (which was not always so: an 1848 image shows a light blue interior) and malachite candelabras.

In 2009, The Telegraph described an average day in the 1844 Room. "When the Queen is ready to receive a guest, she presses a buzzer. Then, the staff ushers in her next appointment—which on that particular June 23, was Lithuanian Ambassador Oskaras Jusys. Mr Jusys comes through the door. After 10 minutes alone with the Queen, he is joined by his five staff, who bow or curtsey as they are introduced,” wrote Andrew Alderson. “Twenty minutes later, Homayoun Tandar, the Afghanistan Ambassador, and his staff go through the same ritual, followed by Penelope Wensley, the Governor of Queensland.”

Although its name evokes the past, the 1844 room remains relevant as ever, even in the 21st century.