The gate opens at a fixed minute. Be holding the right ticket.
Which Alhambra ticket includes the Nasrid Palaces. Why Versailles is worst on a Tuesday. What the Doge’s secret itinerary actually shows you. Reviews of the palace tours you can book, wherever the throne room happens to be.
The Nasrid Palaces, Pena, the State Rooms, the Forbidden City.
Four palaces that carry an entire trip, and the entry each one actually needs. Prices are per head, and every slot below sells out in high season.
01The timed oneAlhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with TicketsThe Nasrid Palaces admit a fixed number every half hour and nothing gets you in late. Book the slot first, plan the day around it.
02The half-day onePena Palace and Park Entrance TicketPena sits above Sintra in the cloud line. Go on the first entry of the morning, before the coaches climb the hill.
03The seasonal oneBuckingham Palace: The State Rooms Entrance TicketBuckingham opens its State Rooms for about ten weeks a year. Outside that window the gate is the tour.
04The enormous oneForbidden City Tour(Group/Private)-Tickets IncludedNine thousand rooms, one direction of travel, no re-entry. A guide is the difference between a courtyard and a court.
Spain holds the three palaces people plan a week around.
Moorish Granada, Mudéjar Seville, Bourbon Madrid. Three completely different ideas of what a palace is, all within a fast train of each other, and all three run on timed entry.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · Royal Alcázar Entry Ticket
The AlhambraNasrid Palaces on a half-hour slot, plus the Generalife gardens.
The Real AlcázarTiled courtyards still used by the royal family, ten minutes from the cathedral.
The Royal PalaceThe largest palace in western Europe, and the Changing of the Guard outside it.
All 372 Spanish palace tours →
The Alhambra sells out weeks ahead, and half the tickets do not include the Nasrid Palaces.
The hill holds three things: the Alcazaba fort, the Generalife gardens and the Nasrid Palaces. Only the last one is capped, timed and stamped on your ticket. Check for the word Nazaríes before you pay.
Six countries where a palace is the reason for the trip.
Andalusian tilework, Venetian doges, Bourbon gilt, Manueline colour on a Sintra ridge, an imperial city inside Beijing, and the working residences of a monarchy that still uses them.
Every palace keeps a second half you have to ask for.
Gardens that need their own ticket. Harems, treasuries and mews sold separately. Attic passages and prison cells on a secret-itinerary tour. The headline room is rarely the best hour of the visit.
The palace tickets more travellers hold than any others.
Every palace review →Venice, Versailles, Seville and Granada in the top four, and the price of each one before anybody adds a guide.
1
Alhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with Tickets
Explore Granada’s Alhambra in three hours with entry to the Nasrid Palaces, Alcazaba, Generalife, Palace of Charles V, and Mosque Baths. A guide such as Antonio, Patricia, or Guillermo brings the art, legends, fountains, and royal stories to life in English, Spanish, French, German, or Italian.
From · $64
Read our review →
2
Stonehenge, Windsor Castle, and Bath from London
from $111
3
Dracula’s Castle, Peles Castle, & Brasov Old Town
from $40
4
Pena Palace and Park Entrance Ticket
from $11
5
Alhambra and Nasrid Palaces Entry Ticket
from $33
6
Neuschwanstein & Linderhof Castle Full-Day Trip
from $94
7
Royal Palace Fast-Access Admission Ticket
from $26
8
Alcázar, Cathedral & Giralda Skip-the-Line Tour
from $64
9
Dracula Castle, Peles Castle & Brasov Old Town
from $40
Five palace entries that will not be there on the day.
Most of a trip can be arranged over breakfast. These cannot: the ticket is capped, the season is short, or the room shuts on a fixed weekday and nobody at the gate can help.
- 01Alhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with TicketsThe Nasrid Palaces admit a capped number per half-hour slot, and the name on the ticket must match your passport.
- 02Versailles Palace and Gardens Full Access TicketClosed Mondays, and Tuesday absorbs everyone the Louvre turns away. The estate is vast; the gardens are a separate ticket on fountain days.
- 03Buckingham Palace: The State Rooms Entrance TicketThe State Rooms open only while the household is away, roughly July to September. The rest of the year you are looking at railings.
- 04Doge’s Palace Reserved Entry TicketThe secret-itinerary route through the attic and the cells runs a handful of times a day in small groups, and it is the half of the palace worth queuing for.
- 05Forbidden City Tour(Group/Private)-Tickets IncludedEntry is capped daily, sold by ID and one-directional. There is no coming back through the Meridian Gate once you are out.
Sintra puts four palaces on one wooded hill and one road up it.
Pena on the summit in yellow and red, the Moorish castle walls beside it, Monserrate and Queluz below. The hill jams by eleven, which makes the first entry of the day the whole trick.
Every Sintra palace day →
Beijing keeps two palaces: one walled, one floating.
The Forbidden City runs north in a single line of courtyards and takes three hours at a brisk walk. The Summer Palace is the opposite: a lake, a covered walkway and an afternoon with no schedule. Both cap entry and both sell by passport number.
- 1Forbidden City Tour(Group/Private)-Tickets Includedfrom $4
- 2T-Square & Forbidden City Group or Private Tourfrom $17
- 3All-Inclusive Tour: Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Great Wallfrom $128
What a day behind a palace gate actually costs.
Every palace tour on the site, grouped by price. Plenty of the world’s great state rooms cost less than lunch outside them.
Plain entry tickets, timed slots and the audio guide: Pena, the Alcázar, the Forbidden City, Windsor.
A guide who knows which door leads where, skip-the-line pairs, and the day trips out to Sintra, Versailles and Peleș.
Private guides, small-group secret itineraries, and the chauffeured days that fit three palaces into one.
Three palace rooms that exist in exactly one place.
Throne rooms and gilt repeat across Europe. Honeycombed muqarnas vaults, a mirrored gallery built to humiliate visiting ambassadors, and a bridge the condemned crossed on foot do not.
The Hall of the Two Sisters
The dome above it is built from thousands of small plaster cells, each one catching light at a slightly different angle, so the ceiling reads as a honeycomb that never quite resolves. Nasrid builders were working in plaster, wood and water because stone was for fortresses; the palace was meant to be renewed, not to last. Entry to this room is the part of an Alhambra ticket that sells out.
- 1Alhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with Tickets★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 19,801 reviews
- 2Alhambra and Nasrid Palaces Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 15,130 reviews
- 3Alhambra & Generalife Fast-Track Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 8,313 reviews
The Hall of Mirrors
Three hundred and fifty-seven mirrors face seventeen windows onto the gardens, at a time when a single mirror was a diplomatic gift. Ambassadors were walked the length of it before an audience, which was the entire point. Go at opening or after three: the gallery is a corridor, and by midday it moves at the pace of the slowest tour group in it.
- 1Versailles Palace and Gardens Full Access Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 41,579 reviews
- 2Skip-the-Line Tour of Palace and Gardens Access★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 10,429 reviews
- 3Versailles Palace & Gardens with Transportation★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 6,222 reviews
The Bridge of Sighs, from the inside
The famous view is from the water. The useful one is from within, on the secret-itinerary route that leaves the state apartments for the attic chancery, the torture chamber and the cells Casanova broke out of. Small groups, a few departures a day, and a completely different building from the one on the postcard.
- 1Doge’s Palace Reserved Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 42,716 reviews
- 2Doge’s Palace & St. Mark’s Basilica with Terrace Access Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 10,697 reviews
- 3Doge’s Palace and St Mark’s Basilica Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 6,291 reviews
Dress codes, camera bans and the bag that will not go in.
A working palace is not a museum. Bangkok turns away bare shoulders and short trousers at the Grand Palace gate. Seoul lends you a hanbok and waives the entry fee. Flash, tripods and large bags are refused almost everywhere, and cloakrooms close before the palace does. Check the sheet before you queue.
By country — where the residences are
Granada, Seville, Madrid, Paris, Venice: the run most palace trips end up making.
Granada
Seville
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