London - With limited dates to tour Buckingham Palace, a chance to peer into the Queen’s life can be tricky to organise.
But thanks to the wonders of technology, glancing through her keyhole is now as easy as turning on your smartphone.
The Royal Collection Trust, the charity which manages the palace, has teamed up with Google to offer sightseers a free ‘virtual tour’ that can be viewed on a mobile.
It is understood the Queen has given the project her seal of approval.
Google’s Buckingham Palace Expedition was filmed using 16 cameras shooting different angles at the same time.
The high resolution images were knitted together so anyone looking at the footage sees astonishingly realistic views in every direction, as if they were in the room themselves.
Viewers can go on a guided tour of seven state rooms, starting with the Grand Entrance, up the John Nash-designed Grand Staircase and through to the Green Drawing Room, where a harpist entertained guests at William and Kate’s 2011 wedding.
The tour – guided in some places by the Queen’s Master of the Household, Tony Johnstone-Burt, and Anna Reynolds, Curator of Paintings – then moves to the Throne Room, the Picture Gallery and the Ballroom before ending in the lavishly-decorated White Drawing Room, where a secret door leads to the Queen’s private apartments.
The 360 degree footage can be viewed on YouTube - but looks fuzzy on a computer screen. Viewers can move their tablet or smartphone around to watch the camera swing and pan round the room.
Viewers can also put their phone into a set of goggles, known as Google Cardboard, which turns the footage into a virtual reality experience. The goggles were launched by the company last year .
Daily Mail