Princess Diana's home reopens to public

LONDON It's the past home of Queen Victoria and Princess Diana, the future residence of Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge and, it's hoped, a stop on tourists' London itineraries.

Kensington Palace part museum, part royal abode is reopening to the public after a two-year $19-million makeover designed to give visitors a sense of what it is like to live in a centuries-old building that has witnessed both affairs of state and affairs of the heart.

Senior curator Joanna Marschner said she hopes the renovated building will shake up preconceptions about royal palaces, offering both the "big, glorious, golden rooms" that people expect, and a trove of more personal, revealing items from Queen Victoria's baby shoes to Princess Diana's little black dress.

"I hope what we have done will engage people who have always thought 'a royal palace is not for me,'" Marschner said Tuesday. "And for them to realize that these remarkable buildings part of the DNA of the city are for them."

Tucked into Kensington Gardens, a public park in central London, Kensington Palace is a warm red-brick contrast to gray Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth II's London home.

It was home to six British monarchs, including Victoria, who spent her childhood here, and now contains several royal "apartments" actually Georgian houses, one of which William and Kate will move into next year.

It also has dozens of rooms that are open to the public. The public side of the palace reopens Monday, in time for a busy tourist season that includes the queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations in June and the summer Olympics.

Project manager Jo Thwaites, who oversaw the renovation, said the changes involved "peeling back the layers of Kensington Palace in order to reveal much more for visitors to enjoy."

Formerly shielded by hedges and fences that made its public entrance hard to find, the palace is now much more welcoming.

The entrance from the park lies beside a lovely ornamental garden surrounded by manicured lawns on which visitors are encouraged to dawdle. It comes as a surprise to find the signs posted there do not say "keep off the grass," but merely warn people to take care on steep slopes.

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Princess Diana's home reopens to public