During the past thousand years kings and queens of the United Kingdom have built, bought and acquired many different residences as their centres of government, workplaces and family homes. Some of them have long since disappeared; others are still in use today.

Until the Middle Ages, the king moved around the country, and Royal residences sprang up in many different places - some as centres from which to rule, others as private family retreats.

Ease of movement was important and many Royal residences were constructed alongside major transport routes - the Palaces of Westminster and Whitehall were built on major roads, for example, and residences such as the lost Tudor palace at Richmond on the banks of the river Thames.

In England, monarchs from the Norman Conquest onwards focused their centres of government on London. The main residences of English monarchs from Edward the Confessor to Henry VIII were the Tower of London and the Palace of Westminster, a site now occupied by the Houses of Parliament.

Security at Royal Palaces was a key issue. Structures such as Windsor Castle and the Tower of London were residences but also fortresses constructed as defences against possible attack.

Another popular residence during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was Eltham Palace, London. Edward III developed the apartments and gardens, and Edward IV's great hall still survives today.

Around 1512 Henry VIII acquired the Palace of Whitehall, where he began a large extension including the addition of a tennis court and bowling alley. The Banqueting Hall created there by Inigo Jones is the only part of the palace to survive today; from a first-floor window, Charles I stepped on to the scaffold for his execution in 1649. After a terrible fire in 1698, the site was developed for the government offices there today.

Other residences of Tudor and Stuart kings included Hampton Court Palace, passed to Henry VIII by Cardinal Wolsey, and Greenwich Palace, now incorporated in the building of the former British Royal Naval College.

Subsequent monarchs mainly divided their time in London between St. James's Palace, built by Henry VIII, and Kensington Palace, bought by William III. In 1762 George III acquired Buckingham House and his son George IV furnished it, but it was not until the reign of Queen Victoria that it finally achieved today's status as the Sovereign's official London residence.

In Scotland, Edinburgh Castle was an important Royal residence and seat of government from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries onwards, but by the end of the fifteenth century it had ceased to be a regular Royal home.

The Stewart kings had a number of alternative residences, including Stirling Castle, Falkland Palace in Fife, Linlithgow Palace in Lothian and the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. The Palace of Holyroodhouse remains the Sovereign's official residence in Scotland.

Over the years, some of these historic Royal residences disappeared. Many of the castles built by the Plantagenet kings fell into ruin. Nonsuch and Richmond, two great Renaissance palaces, have vanished.

In many cases, however, monarchs themselves rescued the buildings. Charles II, George III and George IV saved Windsor; George V and Queen Mary revived Holyroodhouse and completed the plans initiated by Charles II in the seventeenth century. Both are still very much in use as official Royal residences. Other former Royal residences have been conserved as heritage sites and can still be visited today.