The Sovereign's Mile
London, United Kingdom
This route explores Saint James’s, one of London’s most concentrated royal landscapes, where court ritual, architecture, and daily city life have shared the same streets for centuries. From Saint James’s Palace and the Queen’s Chapel to Buckingham Palace, Saint James’s Park, Marlborough House, and Lancaster House, it traces the surviving heart of the royal court. The walk shows how Tudor power, later ceremony, and public spectacle shaped the area, while royal and public London still meet here today.
The stops
- 01 St James's Palace
Saint James's Palace is a Tudor royal palace on Marlborough Road in Saint James's, built by Henry the Eighth in the 1530s on the site of a former leper hospital.
- 02 Justerini & Brooks
Justerini and Brooks is a historic wine merchant in Saint James's associated with the royal and aristocratic trade of the district.
- 03 Queen's Chapel
The Queen's Chapel is a Grade One listed chapel beside Saint James's Palace in Saint James's, designed by Inigo Jones between 1623 and 1625 for a royal Catholic consort who never arrived.
- 04 Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace is the monarch's principal London residence in Westminster, developed from Buckingham House into a palace in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
- 05 St James's Park
Saint James's Park is the oldest of London's Royal Parks, laid out by Henry the Eighth in 1532 as a deer park beside Saint James's Palace.
- 06 Royal Artillery Boer War Memorial
The Royal Artillery Boer War Memorial is a listed memorial on The Mall by Horse Guards Road commemorating 1,083 Royal Artillery soldiers who died in the Second Boer War.
- 07 Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts occupies part of Nash House on Carlton House Terrace overlooking The Mall, in a terrace designed by John Nash in the 1820s.
- 08 Admiralty Arch
Admiralty Arch is a Grade One listed triumphal arch at the eastern end of The Mall, built between 1908 and 1912 as part of the memorial scheme for Queen Victoria.
- 09 Pall Mall
Pall Mall is a historic street in Saint James's running from Saint James's Palace toward Trafalgar Square, named after a seventeenth-century ball-and-mallet game.
- 10 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Memorial
The King George the Sixth and Queen Elizabeth Memorial stands between The Mall and Carlton Gardens, combining a 1955 statue of George the Sixth with a reworked memorial unveiled in 2009.
- 11 The Mall
The Mall is the grand ceremonial road in Saint James's linking Admiralty Arch with Buckingham Palace and forming the processional spine of royal London.
- 12 Marlborough House
Marlborough House is a grand house in Saint James's beside Saint James's Palace, built in the early eighteenth century for Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough.
- 13 Lancaster House
Lancaster House is a nineteenth-century mansion on The Mall in Saint James's, built next to Saint James's Palace on land that once formed part of the palace grounds.
The narration at every stop is in the app — this is the map of where it takes you, with a line on each stop.
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Walk The Sovereign's Mile with a voice in your ear.
Download Odyssey Guide on iPhone to start this walk.
Download on the App StoreiPhone · iOS 16 and later