The monarch's official home in Scotland, at the foot of the Royal Mile, with Mary, Queen of Scots' rooms and a ruined abbey next door
Holyrood began as an abbey. David I founded Holyrood Abbey for Augustinian canons in 1128, and Scottish kings stayed in its guesthouse before James IV built a palace beside it between 1501 and 1505. James V added the great tower at the north-west corner, and it was there, in 1566, that Mary, Queen of Scots, saw her secretary David Rizzio dragged from her supper party and stabbed to death; a stain on the floor is still pointed out as his blood. Most of the rest of the palace is Charles II’s rebuilding of the 1670s, set round a courtyard.
The palace is still the monarch’s official residence in Scotland. The King spends a week here each summer, and it hosts state occasions. The rest of the year the Royal Collection Trust opens the State Apartments, Mary’s rooms in the tower and the abbey ruins to paying visitors, except when the royal family is in residence, and the King’s Gallery at the entrance shows art from the Royal Collection. Arthur’s Seat rises in the park behind the palace, Edinburgh Castle is at the other end of the Royal Mile, and Edinburgh Waverley station is about 1 km west.
