Palace of Westminster
meeting place of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, located in London, England, UK
The Palace of Westminster is the meeting place of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is located in London, England. It is colloquially known as the Houses of Parliament after the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two legislative chambers which occupy the building. The palace is one of the centres of political life in the United Kingdom; "Westminster" has become a metonym for the UK Parliament and government, and the Westminster system of government commemorates the name of the palace. The Elizabeth Tower of the palace houses the bell nicknamed Big Ben and is a landmark of London and the United Kingdom in general. The palace has been a Grade I listed building since 1970 and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987.
The building was originally constructed in the eleventh century as a royal palace and was the primary residence of the kings of England until 1512, when a fire destroyed the royal apartments. The monarch moved to the adjacent Palace of Whitehall, but the remainder of the palace continued to serve as the home of the Parliament of England, which had met there since the 13th century. In 1834 a second, larger fire destroyed the majority of the palace, but the eleventh century Westminster Hall was saved and incorporated into the replacement building.
The competition to design the new palace was won by the architect Charles Barry, who chose a Gothic Revival style for the building. Construction started in 1840 and lasted for 30 years, suffering delays, cost overruns, and the deaths of Barry and his assistant, Augustus Pugin.
“Palace of Westminster” enters the record as meeting place of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, located in London, England, UK. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Palace, Westminster and meeting can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Palace of Westminster” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Palace, Westminster and meeting provides the most credible route into that argument.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q62408. VIAF identifies the subject as 172644544. The Library of Congress control number is sh85146307. Authority coordinates are 51.499, -0.124. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1970, 1987, 1512 and 1834.
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This entry incorporates text from “Palace of Westminster” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.