You’ll get your first good look at the castle as you’re coming into the station and it’s huge! It looks a lot like Camelot with its turrets and fluttering flags and crenelated battlements. It will straight away become your favourite place to visit before you’ve even got off the train.
When you exit the station you have to walk along a winding path through the old town to get up to the castle gates. It’s a very picturesque place full of ye olde shops and cobbles and country-style pubs and you’ll probably want to set aside some time to explore it. Eventually you’ll come to the gun cops on the gate and stump up your money to get in. Then once you’re through the security scanners you can pick up an audio-guide and stroll around at your own leisure.
The medieval Round Tower
The big difference between Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace is that the palace is just one building, whereas in here you get the entire castle precinct plus the chapel, park and gardens. The most iconic part is the Round Tower on top of the motte, and one entire side of that hill has been decorated like a garden rockery with crooked stone steps and babbling little rivers running down it. It’s as if they’ve brought in Disney to design the fortifications… it’s the kind of castle you read about in fairytales. It still has all of the usual thick brick walls and arrow slits, but the moat has been drained away and filled with daffodils and cherry blossom.
As you make your way to the State Apartments you have to walk around the curtain wall at the very top of the castle, and that’s when you really start to appreciate how high up you are. The view must stretch for twenty miles at least. It’s just miles and miles of washed-out hills as they go hazy in the bright light. If you peek over the curtain wall then you’ll be surprised to find that you are actually above the tree line, looking down on their canopies as they climb up the hill.
The Royal State Apartments
You enter the State Apartments through a grand staircase that’s bristling with swords and silver-suited knights on horseback, all set up to defend the King against the tourist hordes pouring through the door. There must be a thousand swords on show, plus another couple of hundred guns and rifles pinned up in spiral patterns.
The Waterloo Chamber is the famous one with chestnut walls and honey-coloured carvings on the roof, decorated with pictures of Wellington and his generals.
The next room contains some very famous portraits of Richard III, Edward IV and Henry V. Then you walk through the next-door and see Henry VIII, Edward VI, James I and a young Elizabeth I. You will recognise all of these paintings because they’re the iconic ones you find in history books. Then you have paintings from the Royal Collection by the likes of Raphael, Rembrandt, Van Dyck and Holbein – this place is better than the National Gallery!
St. George’s Hall and St. George’s Chapel
St. George’s Hall is where they hold all of the big banquets for visiting Heads of State. Silver suits of medieval armour are holding iron pikes over the diners’ heads whilst the roof is covered in hundreds of heraldic shields. Once again it looks just like a Disney castle – this is real history in the guise of Arthur’s Camelot.
St. George’s Chapel is absolutely fantastic with an altar all peach-coloured marble and gold. It’s decorated with some of the brightest stained glass window I have ever seen and the golden plaques and banners of chivalrous knights dating back to the reign of Edward III.
George V and VI are both buried in the chapel, and Charles I and Henry VIII lie under a big black slab in the floor. So here are two of the most infamous English kings of all, lying quietly without fanfare, whilst half of the tourists walk over them without even realising.
If you enjoy this then try Buckingham Palace; Hampton Court Palace and Kensington Palace
