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What are the mimensions of Buckingham palace ballroom?
Executive summary
The Ballroom at Buckingham Palace is consistently described in multiple visitor and historical sources as the largest State Room, cited most often at 36.6 metres long, 18 metres wide and 13.5 metres high (examples: London Guided Walks, Tootbus, Changing-Guard) [1] [2] [3]. Some sources round or convert those figures differently — one account gives roughly 34 m by 14 m in imperial feet — so reported dimensions vary slightly across outlets [4].
1. The commonly cited dimensions: a clear consensus among tourist and guide sources
Several contemporary guide and tourism sites repeat the same set of metric measurements for the Ballroom: 36.6 m long, 18 m wide and 13.5 m high, and use those dimensions when describing where state banquets and investitures are held [1] [2] [3] [5] [6]. These figures appear in multiple independent visitor-facing pages (tour operators, guided-walk blogs and palace overview pages), indicating a broad—if not formal—consensus in public-facing descriptions [1] [6].
2. Official and institutional descriptions: historical context but fewer hard numbers
Royal Collection Trust materials and Buckingham Palace overviews emphasize the Ballroom’s scale and role (largest of the State Rooms, completed mid-1850s, used for state banquets and investitures) but do not foreground a precise triple-dimension measurement in the clips provided here; RCT focuses on history and use rather than repeating a set of metric dimensions [7] [8] [9]. That means the widely quoted numbers seem to circulate mainly in tourism and secondary-reference material rather than being prominently presented in the institutional snippets supplied [7] [8].
3. Slight discrepancies in reporting: metric vs imperial and rounding
Not all sources match word-for-word. For example, a recent Discover Britain write-up expresses the Ballroom height and length in imperial measurements as “46 ft (14 m) high and 111 ft (34 m) long,” figures that differ slightly from the 36.6 × 18 × 13.5 m set repeated elsewhere [4]. This points to rounding, conversion differences, or editorial shorthand in different outlets rather than a direct contradiction about the Ballroom’s large scale [4] [1].
4. How those numbers are used: function and capacity
Beyond raw dimensions, tourist sources use the measurements to explain practical capacity: the Ballroom hosts State Banquets that seat about 170 guests and accommodates investitures and formal receptions — a functional claim repeated alongside the room’s size in guides [1] [5]. The Royal Collection Trust corroborates the Ballroom’s role in state functions and historic entertainment but emphasizes the room’s history and architectural features rather than capacity counts [7] [8].
5. Assessing reliability and likely origin of the metric figures
The 36.6 m × 18 m × 13.5 m numbers are widely repeated across independent tourism sites and guidebooks [1] [2] [3] [6]. However, in the provided material there is no single official Buckingham Palace press release or primary architectural plan cited that originates those exact figures; RCT and palace-focused institutional pages describe the room historically without restating the full triple-dimension in the excerpts provided [7] [8]. Therefore these metric figures are well-attested in public-facing secondary sources but their provenance (architectural drawing, palace fact sheet, or later measurement) is not shown in the supplied sources.
6. What the small disagreements mean for readers
Slight differences — e.g., 34 m vs 36.6 m length, or 14 m vs 13.5 m height — are consistent with simple unit conversions, rounding or editorial summarising rather than substantive disputes about the Ballroom’s character: everyone agrees it is the palace’s largest State Room, created in the 1850s and used for the highest-level ceremonial events [7] [1]. If you need an authoritative single figure for technical work (architectural, conservation or academic use), the sources provided do not supply an original architectural plan or an explicit palace technical datasheet to cite [7] [8].
7. Bottom line and recommended next step
Public-facing guides consistently list the Ballroom as roughly 36.6 m long, 18 m wide and 13.5 m high and describe its ceremonial uses and capacity for around 170 guests [1] [5] [6]. For precise, citable architectural data beyond these secondary sources, consult Buckingham Palace’s official publications, the Royal Household or archival architectural plans; available sources here do not include an original palace technical specification or plan to confirm the provenance of the metric measurements [7] [8].