The Palace of Westminster stands on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. It is the meeting place of the UK Parliament’s House of Commons and House of Lords, which is why the building is commonly called the Houses of Parliament. The familiar silhouette belongs to a working political institution as much as to a landmark: debates, ceremonies and public business continue inside a complex that has developed over many centuries.
The site’s royal history reaches back to the eleventh century, when a palace was established at Westminster. Parliament met there from the thirteenth century, and Westminster Hall became one of the most important surviving parts of the medieval complex. The Palace now seen from the river is largely a nineteenth-century rebuilding, but it incorporates older fabric and occupies a place at the centre of British constitutional history.
