Scone Palace
Scone Palace near Perth in Perthshire is one of Scotland's most historically significant royal sites, standing on the location where the kings of Scotland were crowned for nearly a thousand years from the ninth century to the reign of Charles II in 1651. The Stone of Destiny, the ancient coronation stone of the Scottish kings, stood at Scone until its removal by Edward I of England in 1296, an act of deliberate cultural humiliation that was reversed only in 1996 when the stone was returned to Scotland after seven centuries in Westminster Abbey. The stone now rests in Edinburgh Castle, but Scone retains the authority of its extraordinary history as the seat of Scottish royal investiture.
The current palace was built between 1803 and 1813 for the third Earl of Mansfield in the Gothic Revival style fashionable among Scottish landed proprietors of the period, replacing an earlier building that incorporated the remains of the historic palace on the same site. The resulting Gothic Revival building of considerable scale and quality houses collections of furniture, paintings, porcelain and decorative objects of outstanding importance, assembled by successive Earls of Mansfield over three centuries of aristocratic collecting and reflecting both the family's wealth and their connection through their legal careers to the highest levels of British society.
The palace is still the home of the Mansfield family and is open to visitors throughout the summer season. The state rooms contain remarkable pieces including Louis XVI furniture, Sèvres porcelain, needlework by Mary Queen of Scots and a collection of ivories of international quality. The grounds include a pinetum, a maze and the Moot Hill where the coronation ceremonies were conducted, a small artificial mound of such historical significance that visiting it provides a direct connection to the entire sweep of Scottish royal history.