Holyrood Palace to offer £1 tickets

Following a successful run in London, Style & Society: Dressing the Georgians will be the first exhibition to open at The King’s Gallery in Edinburgh following an 18-month closure for essential maintenance.

Exploring life in Georgian Britain through the fashions of the day, it will be the fortieth exhibition to be held in the Gallery since it was opened as a space to share a wider variety of works from the Royal Collection in Scotland.

As part of the organisation’s charitable aim to ensure that as many people as possible can access and enjoy the Collection, Royal Collection Trust has announced a new scheme of £1 tickets for exhibitions at The King’s Galleries in 2024, available to those receiving Universal Credit and other named benefits. 

In addition to £1 tickets, The King’s Galleries will continue to offer a range of concessionary rates, while visitors who purchase standard tickets directly from Royal Collection Trust can convert them into a 1-Year Pass, allowing free re-entry for 12 months.

The exhibition will bring together almost 100 works from the Royal Collection, including paintings, prints and drawings by artists such as Thomas Gainsborough, William Hogarth and their contemporaries. At the heart of the exhibition will be a selection of surviving period clothing and accessories, alongside paintings showing comparable items. Together, these works will build up a layer-by-layer picture of what the Georgians wore – from the functional dress of laundry maids to the glittering gowns suitable for court – between the accession of George I in 1714 and the death of George IV in 1830.

Anna Reynolds, curator of Style & Society: Dressing the Georgians, said: “Clothing and historical fashion can tell us an enormous amount about life in the Georgian period. It was a time of rapid change, including particularly momentous events in Scotland with attempts to restore the Stuart line to the throne and George IV’s visit north of the border – the first by a reigning monarch in almost 200 years. We are delighted to be launching accessible tickets with the opening of this exhibition, allowing more people than ever to learn about this exciting period in our history.”

Style & Society: Dressing the Georgians at The King’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, 22 March – 22 September 2024.