Rare glimpse inside Kate Middleton and William’s ‘enormous’ Kensington Palace home

As the future King, it’s hardly surprising that Prince William and his family live in a pretty impressive home.

In fact, the Cambridge family have two stunning royal properties – one in London and another in Norfolk.

Their main base is Apartment 1A of Kensington Palace, near Prince George and Princess Charlotte’s school, which boasts 20 rooms, including five reception rooms, three master bedrooms and two nurseries.

It also has two kitchens, which earned the Duchess the nickname two-kitchens Kate after the couple spent £4.5million of taxpayers’ money refurbishing the property when they moved in.

Speaking about the Cambridge family home on True Royalty’s Royal Beat, royal author Christopher Warwick said: “It has 20 rooms from the basement to the attic, it is not a small house.

“All of these royal residences at Kensington Palace are called apartments, which of course makes people immediately think they are flats like the American term for an apartment.

“They are not. If you think of Kensington Place in a way it is built around three courtyards. If you kind of think of them as being these wonderful red brick terrace houses. Because they are all joined, but separate houses.”

Royal editor Ingrid Seward added: “It’s enormous – and it’s like a piece of countryside in London.”

The Cambridges aren’t the only royals to live at the palace, and Princess Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank, Prince Richard, the Queen’s cousin and his wife and the Prince and Princess of Kent also call it home.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry also used to live there, in Nottingham Cottage, before moving to Windsor, and then Canada and LA.

While parts of Kensington Palace are open to the public, the family’s private living area isn’t – and they are given completely privacy there.

However Kate and William occasionally use it as a base when hosting guests – which means we’ve have a sneak peek inside some of the more formal parts.

When Barack and Michelle Obama visited the UK back in 2016, Kate and William invited them into their apartment for dinner.

Later that year the Duchess set up a ‘news room’ in the Palace to use on the day she guest edited the Huffington Post UK for a day as part of the Young Minds Matter initiative.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the couple have been working from home like everyone else – and they’ve shown us some snaps of their offices.

Kate has a line of Penguin’s Clothbook Classics, novels released in hardback with beautifully illustrated covers.

Her collection includes Jane Austin’s Manfield Park and Northanger Abbey and George Elliott’s Middlemarch.

Buying all the books separately would set you back £450, but they’re currently on offer for £330 for all 30.

Kate’s wooden chair has a creamed stripped cushion.

In the background there is a white sofa, and what looks like a children’s armchair which may belong to George, Charlotte and Louis.

William also shared a snap of his home set up, which appears to be in a different room, with a traditional wooden desk in front of a large fireplace.

He has a set of modern office drawers with a key next to the desk, on which William has placed a printer and an iPad in a stand.

There is a beautiful lamp on the desk, which is also covered in papers.

We had another glimpse inside when Williams invited Peter Crouch, Tom Fordyce and Chris Stark over to record a podcast – and the group tucked into a takeaway curry in a glamorous dining room.