Buckingham Palace is finishing a 10-year, £369 million ($487 million) renovation, and the King has decided he won't live there. [1]
After the work wraps next year, Charles and Queen Camilla will stay where they already are: Clarence House, the stately home down the road where Charles has lived since he was Prince of Wales. No British monarch has skipped living at Buckingham Palace since Queen Victoria moved in. He's breaking that streak right after spending nearly half a billion dollars on new plumbing, wiring and heating.
Here's the part the viral version gets wrong: the palace isn't being abandoned, and the King isn't fleeing a money pit. Charles and Camilla will keep working out of the building, which royal officials say remains "the ceremonial and operational center" of the monarchy. "It is and will remain Monarchy HQ, the crown jewel of our national buildings," said James Chalmers, the official who manages the King's finances. [1] The 775-room palace still hosts the state dinners, the balcony appearances and the backdrop for parades down The Mall. What changes is the residence, not the headquarters.
So why not live there? The stated reason is access. Keeping the royal apartments empty lets the palace host more events and expand tours. It already draws about 700,000 visitors a year, and the plan is to grow that number. The renovation, begun in 2017, was always pitched as future-proofing the building to house the monarchy for another 50 years — it just won't house this monarch as a resident.
The tax reveal
The housing news landed alongside something genuinely unprecedented. Charles became the first British monarch to disclose the tax he personally pays: £12.9 million ($16.1 million) in income and capital gains tax for 2024-25, up from £11.7 million the year before. [1] One widely shared post claimed that puts him "in the top 100 of UK taxpayers." [2]
Both announcements came at a royal finances briefing, and the timing isn't subtle. The palace is trying to change the subject after months of Epstein-linked headlines about the former Prince Andrew, now styled Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. [1]
What's still unsettled is what an empty residential palace actually becomes. Royal historian Ed Owens said it would be "a shame" if the building sits vacant much of the year, and he's "waiting to see whether there will be a sort of a more radical proposal for what Buckingham Palace might be in the future." [1] For now, the most famous address in Britain has a finished renovation, a returning crowd of tourists, and no one sleeping upstairs.
Sources
Primary source: King Charles III will not live at Buckingham Palace after its costly refurbishment
- King Charles will not live in Buckingham Palace after $487 million renovation — reporting
- Tweet by @PolitlcsUK — @PolitlcsUK · community
- Tweet by @BBCNews — @BBCNews · community
- Tweet by @NewsHour — @NewsHour · community