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The Speaker of the Commons lives in the Palace, and this is the way into the state rooms.
Guided tourHistoryArt & design
In Houses of Parliament & Big Ben.
The Speaker of the House of Commons has an official residence in the north-east corner of the Palace, at the foot of the Elizabeth Tower, and the tour goes up its Grand Staircase and through the Crimson Drawing Room, the State Dining Room and the State Bedroom. On the walls is a set of forty-six portraits of Speakers, and the guide fills in what the job has involved since the first of them in 1377.
The State Bedroom is not the Speaker's. It is there because when the Palace was rebuilt after the fire of 1834 the monarch was still expected by tradition to sleep at Westminster the night before being crowned in the Abbey, so a room was provided for it; the space had been the Serjeant-at-Arms' drawing room before that, and smaller dinners are held in it now. Its state bed went missing in the Second World War, when the floor was turned into a flat for the Speaker: the bed was put in store, sold off and forgotten. In 1979 a newspaper printed an old photograph of it, somebody recognised it in a Welsh woollen mill, and it was bought back in 1981 and restored for the nation.
Seventy-five minutes, fully accessible, and there is nowhere to sit down along the route. £23, with concessions available. Best for ages sixteen and over. Tours run Monday to Saturday, 09:15 to 16:15, during the Easter and summer parliamentary recesses only — the weeks when the Commons is not sitting.
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.