State rooms, timed slots, hedged parterres

Anyone can queue for a palace. Getting in well is the trick.

Which Versailles ticket includes the estate. Whether the Nasrid slot is worth rearranging a day for. What the Doge’s Palace costs before a guide is added. Reviews of the palace tours you can actually book.

Start with the state rooms Straight to the palaces →

1,230bookable palace visits

from $5cheapest palace entry

189palace entries under $25

A gilded state room on the Versailles estate, chandeliers lit

Versailles Palace & Gardens with Transportation

Pena Palace in its red and yellow paint above the Sintra hills

Sintra, Pena Palace, Cabo da Roca, & Cascais Tour

The gold spires of the Grand Palace compound in Bangkok

Grand Palace, Wat Pho, and Wat Arun Guided Tour

Start here

Versailles, the Doge’s Palace, the Alhambra, Pena.

The four palaces most people book first, what each entry actually covers, and the hour that decides how the visit feels.

How you get in

A palace is four different visits, and they are not priced alike.

The same building sells a bare entry ticket, a timed skip-the-line slot, a guided walk through the state rooms and a private morning before the doors open. What each one costs, and what it buys you.

★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · Royal Palace Fast-Access Admission Ticket

Plain entryThe ticket, the rooms, your own pace. from $5

Skip the queueA printed time slot instead of the gate line. from $7

Guided state roomsA guide who knows which door mattered. from $14

Private, earlyYour own guide, usually before the coaches. from $5

Gardens and groundsParterres, orangeries and the long walk out. from $6 All 1,133 palace tours →

Where the crowns lived

Six countries that kept their royal houses standing.

Venetian council chambers, a French estate the size of a town, Moorish courtyards in Andalusia, a hilltop folly above Sintra, the Georgian state rooms of London and the Habsburg yellow of Vienna.

Best ofItalyDoge’s council rooms and Medici apartments Best ofSpainNasrid courtyards and a Bourbon throne room Best ofFranceVersailles, the Trianons and the Loire estates Best ofPortugalSintra’s hilltop palaces and Queluz Best ofThe UKState rooms, guard changes and Holyrood Best ofAustriaHabsburg gold at Schonbrunn and the Hofburg

Italy

Italy’s palaces were offices, not just homes.

Every Italian palace day →

★★★★★★★★★★4.6· 42,716 travellers on the most-booked Italian entry

Venice ran a republic out of the Doge’s Palace, Florence ran a bank and then a duchy out of the Palazzo Vecchio and the Pitti, and the Bourbons built Caserta to out-do Versailles. Three very different days, all of them indoors.

1Doge’s Palace Reserved Entry Ticketfrom $41
2Doge’s Palace & St. Mark’s Basilica with Terrace Access Tourfrom $123
3Doge’s Palace and St Mark’s Basilica Walking Tourfrom $101

Venice

The Doge’s Palace, and what to add to it

2–3h· timed entry· basilica combos

The reserved ticket covers the apartments, the council chambers and the Bridge of Sighs. Pairing it with St Mark’s saves a second queue on the same square, and the terrace add-on is the only way onto the loggia.

Florence

Palazzo Vecchio, the Pitti, or both

1–2h· two palaces· Boboli attached

The Palazzo Vecchio is a working town hall with a painted hall upstairs and a tower you can climb. The Pitti is the Medici’s later address, and the Boboli gardens behind it are a separate ticket most people skip.

Campania

Caserta, the Versailles answer

4–6h· from Naples· 2km of garden

The Bourbon palace outside Naples runs a staircase, a royal apartment and a garden axis long enough to need the shuttle bus. Small-group day trips out of Naples handle the train and the shuttle for you.

Best ofVeniceBest ofFlorenceBest ofRomeBest ofCaserta

Compare every Italian palace day →

Book ahead

Four palaces that decide the date for you.

Most of a trip can be arranged the night before. Palaces cannot: they run on printed time slots, a closed day each week, a summer-only season and a dress code enforced at the gate.

01Alhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with TicketsEntry to the Nasrid Palaces is a half-hour window printed on the ticket, and the name on it has to match your passport. Slots sell out weeks out in summer.
02Versailles Palace and Gardens Full Access TicketThe palace is shut on Mondays, and the Hall of Mirrors is only quiet in the first hour. A Tuesday morning slot is a different building to a Sunday afternoon one.
03Buckingham Palace: The State Rooms Entrance TicketThe State Rooms open for a few weeks in late summer while the household is away. Outside that window the tour does not exist.
04Grand Palace, Wat Pho, and Wat Arun Guided TourShoulders and knees stay covered inside the compound. The gate turns away vests, shorts and short skirts, and the rental queue for a cover-up is its own delay.

Only there

Three palaces that are not like the others.

Gilded state rooms repeat across Europe. A Moorish honeycomb ceiling, a Romanticist folly painted in two colours and a compound of gold spires around an emerald Buddha do not.

Granada

The Nasrid Palaces

The last emirs of Granada built in plaster, tile and water rather than stone and gold. Ceilings hang in honeycombed muqarnas, courtyards are laid out around still pools that double the arcades, and the whole thing is scaled to a room rather than a parade. Entry runs in half-hour bands because the floor space is small, which is also why it feels nothing like a European throne room.

1Alhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with Tickets★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 19,801 reviews
2Alhambra and Nasrid Palaces Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 15,130 reviews
3Alhambra & Gardens Tour w/Nasrid Palaces Option★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 7,022 reviews

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Sintra

Pena Palace

Ferdinand II took a ruined monastery on the highest ridge above Sintra and turned it into a Romanticist fantasy painted red and yellow, with Moorish arches, a drawbridge that never defended anything and a triton over the main door. The hill makes its own weather: cloud sits below the terrace most mornings and swallows the whole palace by mid-afternoon.

1Pena Palace and Park Entrance Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 17,410 reviews
2Pena Palace, Sintra, Cabo da Roca, & Cascais Daytrip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 9,981 reviews
3Small Group Tour to Sintra, Pena Palace, Cabo Roca and Cascais★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,559 reviews

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Bangkok

The Grand Palace

Less a palace than a walled town of gold spires, mirrored mosaic and a jade Buddha that gets three changes of costume a year. The Chakri kings stopped living here a century ago and the compound stayed ceremonial, which is why the dress code is enforced at the gate and why the coronation hall still shuts without notice for state business.