Balmoral Castle

Listen first. The River Dee runs fast and shallow here, sliding over smooth stones beside the lawns. The air smells of pine resin and cut grass, and sometimes of woodsmoke. Above the trees, a pale tower rises against the hills. The stone looks almost silver on a grey day, and warm cream when the sun breaks through. Welcome to Balmoral Castle, the Highland home of the British royal family, in the valley that people here call Royal Deeside.

Before we look at the building, it helps to know one thing. Balmoral is not a palace of the state. It is a private home. The monarch owns it personally, not as part of the Crown's official property. That difference shapes everything about this place. It explains why it feels less like a seat of government and more like a family estate. It also explains why the doors open to visitors only for part of the year, when the family is away.

The story of the modern castle begins with Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert. In the 1840s the couple visited Scotland and fell in love with the Highlands. They took on the lease of an older house on this site in 1848. Victoria wrote that the scenery reminded Albert of the forests and hills of his native Germany. A few years later, in 1852, the estate was bought outright. The old house was soon judged too small for a royal family with many children and many guests.

So they built a new one. Albert was closely involved in the design, working with the Aberdeen architect William Smith. The new castle was finished in the mid-1850s, and the older house nearby was taken down. The style is called Scottish Baronial. That means a Victorian revival of the fortified tower houses of old Scottish lairds, the local landowners. Think of turrets, stepped gables, small pointed roofs, and a tall tower. Here, however, the battlements are decoration. This castle was built for comfort, not for war.

Look closely at the walls. The stone is granite, cut from the local area, and it gives the building its unusual pale colour. Granite is hard, slow to weather, and full of tiny crystals. On a bright day you may notice a faint sparkle in the surface. Aberdeenshire has a long tradition of granite building, and the city of Aberdeen itself is often called the Granite City. Balmoral is part of that same tradition, dressed up in royal style.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. Prince Albert did not stop at the architecture. He also helped design a tartan for the family, called the Balmoral tartan. It is a grey pattern with touches of red and black, meant to echo the colour of the local granite. By tradition, only members of the royal family, and a few people with their permission, wear it. Inside the castle, Victoria and Albert filled rooms with tartan carpets, curtains and upholstery. Some guests found it a little overwhelming.

Victoria wrote about her life here in a journal, and extracts were later published as a book in the 1860s. Readers across Britain read about picnics on the hills, long walks, and visits to the cottages of estate workers. The book helped to create a romantic image of the Highlands. Writers later invented a word for this fashion: Balmorality. It described the Victorian taste for tartan, stags' heads, bagpipes and a gentle, idealised version of Scottish life.

The happiness did not last. Prince Albert died in 1861, and Victoria entered a long period of mourning. Balmoral became a place of retreat for her, far from the crowds of London. Across the wider estate, she built stone cairns on the hilltops, which are piles of stones raised as memorials. The largest is a pyramid-shaped cairn dedicated to Albert. If you walk the estate trails, you may see some of these cairns standing on the high ground.

For the generations that followed, Balmoral became the family's late-summer home. Queen Elizabeth the Second was especially fond of it. She spent part of almost every summer here, walking the hills, riding, and attending services at the small church at Crathie, just across the road. And it was here, at Balmoral, that she died in September 2022. That gives this quiet valley a new weight in the story of modern Britain. Many visitors pause on the lawns with that moment in mind.

Now, a second surprise. Most people who visit expect to walk through the castle rooms. In fact, the family's private apartments stay closed. Usually the only room inside the castle that visitors may enter is the ballroom, the largest room in the building. It often holds displays of paintings, silver and other objects from the royal collection. The rest of the visit happens outdoors, in the gardens, the grounds and the exhibitions in the former stable buildings.

The gardens are worth your time. Walk slowly past the formal beds, the glasshouses and the kitchen garden. Gardeners still grow fruit, vegetables and flowers here for the household. In summer the borders fill with colour against the grey stone. Beyond the gardens, paths lead through woodland of Scots pine and birch. Red squirrels sometimes appear here, so keep an eye on the tree trunks. Listen too for the river, which is never far away.

Lift your eyes to the south. On a clear day you may see a broad, rounded mountain with dark cliffs on its northern face. That is Lochnagar, one of the best-known peaks in this part of the Cairngorms. Victoria climbed it, and the poet Lord Byron wrote about it in his youth. Much later, King Charles the Third, then a young prince, wrote a children's story set on its slopes, called The Old Man of Lochnagar. The mountain has been part of this family's life for a long time.

Before you leave, stand for a moment on the lawn and look back at the castle. Notice the clock tower, the cluster of turrets, and the flag on the roof. Notice how the building sits low among the trees, with the hills rising behind it. Then listen again for the river. The Dee was running past this spot long before any royal family arrived. It will still be running as you walk back towards the gate, past the pines and the pale granite, into the quiet of Deeside.