Since the 11th century it has been the country residence of British monarchs. It was founded in 1066. By now it has been repeatedly rebuilt and enlarged. For visitors are opened luxurious halls with rich interior decoration and antique furniture. They display works of art from the collection of the kings. In Windsor Park, you can explore St. George’s Chapel. The large park is decorated with graceful sculptures.

Windsor Castle is still the current residence of the British Royal Family and is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest inhabited castle in the world. The building has come a long way from a wooden military building to one of the most famous and beautiful palaces. At different times Windsor Castle has become an embodiment of architectural fantasies of many monarchs with quite different tastes. It has changed practically throughout its history, being influenced by a variety of styles from medieval romanticism to neo-Gothic. So what is this architectural ensemble today, and what is the history of its creation?

Windsor Castle was founded in 1070 by William I on a hill in the Thames River valley, 30 kilometers from London. It was originally a wooden fortress surrounded by a stone wall. A little later an additional wall of wood was built to the east of the hill (the Upper Yard is now in its place), and by the end of the century a similar wall was built near the western slope of the hill, where the Lower Yard is now. Later all these buildings were repeatedly rebuilt, but the layout itself has been preserved to this day – two four-coal buildings (courtyards), and in the middle a round tower on a hill.

In spite of the fact that already in the first half of XII century Windsor Castle was entirely made of stone, until the reign of Edward III who ascended the throne in 1327, the building was not a true residence of the royal family. From 1350 to 1377, Edward III spent an unprecedented sum of £51,000 on renovations for those times. He decided to make Windsor Castle the new Camelot. Here he also founded a new order of chivalry – the Order of the Garter. It was under Edward III that St George’s Chapel with its lancet windows and colored stained glass windows was built in the lower courtyard of the castle and is one of the major buildings of English Gothic. The Chapel is adorned with a menagerie of 76 heraldic statues, each of which has important symbolic meaning: the bull embodies courage, the griffin symbolizes vigilance, the unicorn symbolizes strength, the swan symbolizes grace and perfection. Windsor Castle itself was also reconstructed during this period under the influence of the Gothic style, and the roofs and windows of most of the buildings were altered accordingly.

The next important phase of Windsor Castle’s transformation took place from 1660 to 1683, during the reign of Charles II. In his desire to restore the grandeur of the monarchy, Charles II ordered the Baroque reconstruction of Windsor Castle and hired the architect Hugh May to do it. As a result, the castle took on the features of the richest royal palace.

Windsor Castle got its modern look in the XIX century, during the reign of George IV. His ambitious plan was to convert Windsor Castle from a building with a mixture of styles into a harmonious Gothic ensemble. To accomplish this, the plain walls were decorated with battlements, loopholes, lancet arches, and various statues. The round tower at the center of the architectural composition was raised by 9 meters to make it look even more majestic. In this way George IV lived out his romantic dream of what a medieval castle should look like. But he took a very different approach to the interiors, each room having a specific style of Gothic, neoclassical, Rococo, and so on.

Finally, the last major restoration of Windsor Castle was not a purely conceptual effort, but rather a necessity after a major fire in 1992. It was George IV’s design that was taken as the basis for the restoration.

Today Windsor Castle is not a museum, it is still one of the residences of the royal family. Elizabeth II lives here for about a month in spring and a week in June. The rest of the time the castle is open to tourists. Every year Windsor Castle, which occupies about 5 hectares, is visited by more than a million tourists. And this is not surprising, because the castle is an architectural symbol of the greatness of the British monarchy and the firmness of its traditions. The surprising thing is that with such a symbolic value, Windsor Castle has been transformed more often than any other building in the Foggy Albion, and it has been transformed under the influence of the most progressive architectural trends.