London, England
Palace of Westminster
A palace on the river where the kings of England lived for nearly five hundred years and where Parliament has met for more than seven hundred. Nearly all of it burned down in one night in 1834. What you see is the rebuilding: eleven hundred rooms, a clock tower ninety-six metres high, and inside it a cracked bell that the whole world knows by a nickname.
Photo: Diliff, CC BY-SA 2.5, Wikimedia Commons
You are standing on a bridge over a wide brown river. On the far bank a building of honey-coloured stone runs along the water for more than a quarter of a kilometre, covered from top to bottom in upright stone ribs and small pointed spires. At the near end is a tall square tower with a clock face on each side. At the far end is a heavier tower with a flag.
On the hour, the clock plays sixteen notes and then a single deep bell begins to strike. That bell is Big Ben. It first rang over London in July 1859, the ninth year of the Xianfeng emperor in China, a few months before Darwin published his book on the origin of species.
The outside is free at any hour. Westminster Hall is seen on every tour and by anyone who comes to watch a debate. The two chambers are on the guided and audio tours. The clock tower needs its own ticket.
| Part | Ticket |
|---|---|
| The Elizabeth Tower and Big Ben | Outside free; tower tour 55 pounds |
| Westminster Hall | On every tour; free for those watching a debate |
| The Central Lobby | On the tours |
| The House of Commons | On the tours; public gallery free |
| The House of Lords | On the tours; public gallery free |
| The Victoria Tower | Outside only |
| The Jewel Tower | Separate small museum, own ticket |
This is a palace, and it still belongs to the Crown. King Edward the Confessor built a house here beside his abbey before 1066. His successors lived in it until 1512, when a fire drove Henry VIII out. Parliament, which had begun as the king's council meeting in the king's house, stayed behind.
On the night of 16 October 1834, workmen burning old wooden tax records in the furnaces under the House of Lords overheated the flues. By morning the palace was gone, except for the great hall and a few old corners.
The new building took thirty years. Charles Barry drew the plan. Augustus Pugin designed everything you can touch: the carving, the tiles, the wallpaper, the door handles, the inkstands. Pugin died insane at forty, before the clock tower he had drawn was finished.
"Big Ben is the tower." Big Ben is the largest bell inside it. The tower was called the Clock Tower until 2012, when it was renamed the Elizabeth Tower for the sixtieth year of the Queen's reign.
"It is a medieval building." Almost everything you see was built between 1840 and 1870, in the style of four hundred years earlier. The real medieval part is the plain grey hall behind the clock tower.
"Foreigners cannot go in." Anyone may watch a debate from the public gallery, free, and anyone may buy a ticket for a tour.
"The bell is cracked, so it must be broken." It has been cracked since two months after it was hung. It was turned a little and given a lighter hammer, and the crack is why it sounds as it does.
"The King opens Parliament in the House of Commons." No king or queen has entered the Commons while it is sitting since 1642. The King speaks in the House of Lords, and the members of the Commons are sent for.
The first three stops are outside and free. Stops four to seven are inside, on the route of the tours. The last is outside again, at the back.
Barry was a classical architect, and his plan is as regular as a Greek temple: a long straight front with the two chambers in line on one axis. Pugin, who loved the Middle Ages, covered it in Gothic detail and then complained that it was all Greek underneath.
The stone is a soft sand-coloured limestone from Yorkshire. London's coal smoke began to eat it before the building was finished, and repairs have gone on ever since.
Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty
William Wordsworth, Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 (written of the view from the old bridge, before the fire)
The tower is ninety-six metres high. Each dial is nearly seven metres across and is made of more than three hundred pieces of milk-white glass. The minute hands are four metres long.
Under each dial is a line of gilded Latin. It asks God to keep safe "our Queen Victoria the First".
After a repair that lasted from 2017 to 2022 the hands and frames are again the dark blue Pugin chose. Since the 1930s they had been painted black to hide the soot.
At night, look for a lamp above the clock. It is lit when either house is still sitting.
The bell weighs nearly fourteen tonnes. The first one cast for the tower cracked on test and was broken up. The second was pulled through the streets by sixteen horses and hauled up the inside of the tower on its side, a job of many hours.
The clock was designed by a lawyer who quarrelled with nearly everyone he worked with. It is kept right with old pennies. A coin added to the top of the pendulum makes the clock gain two-fifths of a second in a day.
The tune before the hour comes from Cambridge. The hour is counted from the first stroke of the great bell, not from the tune.
You enter through the oldest room. The walls were built in 1097 for William II, son of the Conqueror. In China this was the Northern Song (960–1127), the year the poet Su Shi was sent into exile on Hainan. The hall was the largest in Europe.
Look up. The oak roof was put on three hundred years later, in the 1390s, the last years of the first Ming emperor. It crosses twenty metres without a single post. Each great beam ends in a carved angel holding a shield.
For six centuries the chief law courts of England sat in the corners of this room, among bookstalls and sellers of toys. Brass plates in the floor mark where men stood trial for their lives.
A flight of steps and a long hall lined with statues bring you to an eight-sided room under a high stone vault set with mosaic. Four doors lead out of it. One goes to the Commons, one to the Lords.
Any citizen may come here and send in a card asking to see the member for his district. The English word for pressing a politician, "to lobby", comes from rooms like this one.
Over the four doors are mosaics of the patron saints of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
The room is plain, panelled in oak, with benches of green leather. The government sits on one side and the opposition faces it. There are seats for about two-thirds of the members.
Two red lines run along the carpet in front of the benches. A member speaking must not step over the line.
The stone arch at the entrance is chipped and blackened. It is from the chamber bombed in 1941, and was left as it was found.
Here Pugin was allowed to do as he liked. The benches are red, the ceiling is gold, and at the end is a throne under a canopy of carved and gilded wood that took him and his craftsmen years.
In most years the King sits here once and reads out what his government means to do. An officer is sent to fetch the Commons. Their door is shut in his face, and he must knock three times with a black rod. The mark of the rod is worn into the wood.
The square tower at the south end is the taller of the two by two metres. It was built as a fireproof store for the records of Parliament, after the fire had destroyed most of them. The arch at its foot is the King's door.
Across the road is a small stone tower with a dry moat. It was built in 1365 to hold the king's jewels and silver, and it is one of the few pieces of the old palace that the fire did not reach.
| Year | Here | Elsewhere |
|---|---|---|
| 1097 | The great hall is built | Northern Song China; the First Crusade is on its way to Jerusalem |
| 1390s | The oak roof is put on the hall | The last years of the Hongwu emperor, founder of the Ming |
| 1605 | A plot to blow up king and Parliament is found out | The Wanli reign in China; the Italian priest Matteo Ricci is living in Beijing |
| 1649 | The king is tried in the hall and beheaded | Five years after the fall of the Ming (1368–1644); the Shunzhi emperor is still a child |
| 1834 | The palace burns down | The Daoguang reign; a British envoy is turned away at Guangzhou |
| 1859 | The clock starts and the bell cracks | The Xianfeng reign; British ships are beaten off at the Dagu forts |
| 1941 | The Commons chamber is destroyed by bombs | The Second World War; the fourth year of China's war with Japan |
| 2022 | The tower comes out of its scaffolding; a queen lies in state in the hall | Elizabeth II had reigned for seventy years |
Films from official channels, played from YouTube. Nothing is loaded until you press play.
These are stories people tell about this place. They are legends, not history, and each one says where it comes from.
The bell is named after Sir Benjamin Hall, a very large man who was in charge of public works when it was cast. During a long debate on what to call it, a member shouted "Call it Big Ben!" and the house laughed. Others say it was named after Ben Caunt, a heavyweight boxer of the day.
Source: No record of such a debate exists in the official reports of Parliament
The red lines on the floor of the Commons are two sword-lengths and a foot apart, so that members on opposite sides could not reach each other with a blade.
Source: Told to every visitor; there is no record that members were ever allowed to bring swords into the chamber
It is against the law to die in the Houses of Parliament, because anyone who dies in a royal palace must be given a state funeral.
Source: A favourite of British newspapers; lawyers who looked for such a law found none
When William II first walked into his new hall, the largest in Europe, his courtiers praised its size. He answered that it was not half big enough, and was only a bedroom to the palace he meant to build.
Source: Henry of Huntingdon, History of the English, about 1130
Later, people who live here will be able to add the stories they grew up with, and say which of these they have heard.
Last checked 2026-11-12. The UK Parliament's own visitor pages (parliament.uk), read in November 2026 for tours, prices and rules.
Checked 2026-11-12
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