More than a quarter-of-a-century since her tragic death, Princess Diana is as popular as ever. We step inside the extraordinary places that Princess Diana called home, from the stately home where she grew up, to the Kensington Palace apartment where she raised Princes William and Harry. Click and scroll to take a look back at Diana's life at home and explore some pretty major royal residences along the way.

Diana Frances Spencer was born on 1 July 1961 at Park House in Sandringham, a rented property on the Royal Family's private estate. The Spencer family descend from a long line of aristocrats who were close to the British royal family for decades. Diana’s grandmother was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother and Queen Elizabeth II even attended her parents' wedding.

Diana had a happy early childhood growing up on the Norfolk estate. She’s pictured here as a very young child in her pram at Park House. According to her former nanny, Inge Crane, she was "very, very cuddly". "There's always been something special about Park House. It's difficult to put a finger on what it is," Crane told CNN.

Althorp is often credited as being her childhood home but she lived at Park House until she was 14, so her early roots were very much here in Norfolk. Even Diana’s mother, the Hon. Frances Burke Roche, was born at Park House in 1936, the very same day that King George V died at Sandringham House. 

Diana grew up with three siblings: Sarah, Jane and Charles. When this photograph of her with Charles, Viscount Althorp, was taken in the summer of 1967, she had no idea that her world was about to be turned upside down. Shortly afterwards, her mother Frances left her father to be with Peter Shand Kydd, an heir to a wallpaper fortune in Australia. By 1969, they were married following a bitter divorce that affected the young Diana forever. 

The last of the Spencers left Park House in 1974. Nine years later, in 1983, Queen Elizabeth donated the house to the disability charity Leonard Cheshire. In 1987 it opened its doors as an accessible country hotel for people with a range of conditions, including Parkinson’s, cerebral palsy and spinal injuries, but it was forced to close in 2020 due to mounting repair costs, The Sun reports.

Diana and her family moved to Althorp in 1976, when she was 14 years old, after her father, John Spencer, Viscount Althorp, came into his title. Despite the bitter state of her parents' relationship, she was said to have loved the place. A former Althorp cook, Betty Andrews, told the BBC in 1997: "Looking back, it was probably the happiest time of her life.” 

The grand stately home has been in Diana’s family for over five centuries, with 20 generations having lived there. Her aristocratic bloodline traces back to such noted figures as George Washington and Mary Queen of Scots and the house boasts some stunning roooms, including this gallery with a fine display of paintings by Van Dyke and Lely. 

Pictured here with Diana’s brother Charles, Diana's father was remarried to Raine McCorquodale, daughter of the romantic novelist Dame Barbara Cartland, in the same year. After taking over Althorp he was forced to sell many treasures to pay for its upkeep and even started producing his own wine.

The 90-room house was built in 1508 on a beautiful estate covering over 500 acres. Set in the grounds there are cottages, farms, woodland and entire villages, more than enough to keep the young Diana occupied.

Fallow deer have been roaming at Althorp since the 16th century and the estate is home to many native bird species, such as barn owls and grey partridge. Veteran trees are the stars of over 10,000 acres of woodland, including a 72-foot Crimea Oak that was planted by Sir John Spencer III in 1589.

This is the South Drawing Room, where the family would have hosted guests; the walls are lined with a number of revealing portraits. Alongside a Joshua Reynolds portrait of the young Viscount Spencer, painted in 1786, there’s a picture of Lady Georgina Spencer as a child. Better known as the Duchess of Devonshire – portrayed by Kiera Knightly in the film The Duchess – comparisons have been drawn between her life and Diana's.

The King William bedroom, adorned in blues and sunny yellows, was Diana's favourite place to sleep when she returned to visit Althorp after she was married. Diana was said to love the grounds and house, and it’s not hard to see why. Having inherited Althorp House, her brother, the present Earl Spencer, now resides there with his family.

Like many young aristocrats, Diana was educated at boarding school and spent much of her time there as a child. She began her schooling at Silfield in Gayton, Norfolk, and moved to Riddlesworth Hall School, an all-girls boarding school near Thetford, when she was nine. 

At the age of 12, Diana moved schools to join her sisters Sarah and Jane at West Heath Girls' School in Sevenoaks, Kent, in 1973. The exclusive institution boarded around 100 girls at the time.

Diana was never a strong academic and failed her O-Levels twice before departing West Heath when she was sixteen. Her brother Charles recalls her as being quite shy up until that time, but adds that she did show a talent for music and was an accomplished pianist. Diana also excelled in swimming and diving and studied ballet and tap dance.

Lifted from the pages of a family photo album, this image shows a 13-year-old Diana with her Shetland pony, Souffle, at her mother's home in Scotland during the summer of 1974.

After departing West Heath, Diana spent one month at the exclusive Swiss finishing school Institut Alpin Videmanette, shown in this rare unpublished photo. While it closed its doors for good in 1991, for a while it was the most expensive school in Europe and taught lessons in skiing, cooking, dressmaking and French. Valuable skills for a future princess to learn...

In July 1979, Diana’s mother bought her a flat at Coleherne Court in Earl's Court for a reported £50,000 ($61k) as an 18th birthday present. She lived there with three flatmates until 25th February 1981, during which time she took an advanced cooking course and went on to do a number of humble jobs, including a spell as a dance instructor, a playgroup assistant, a nanny and even working as a cleaner for her sister, Lady Sarah.

The flat sits on Old Brompton Road, between Earl’s Court and Kensington. A playground for young, rich aristocrats even today, it’s filled with upmarket restaurants and designer shops including Harrods. In Andrew Morton's memoir, Diana, In Her Own Words, she called her days there "the happiest time of her life... It was juvenile, innocent, uncomplicated and above all fun."

In 1980, Lady Diana Spencer was by now romantically linked with the Prince of Wales and this image shows her leaving her London flat in her car, pursued by photographers. Charles and Diana originally met in 1977 when she was 16 and he was dating her older sister, Lady Sarah. They met again at a country weekend in 1980 and he began courting her officially, inviting her to go sailing with him on the royal yacht Britannia at Cowes and then to meet the Queen and Queen Mother at Balmoral, now the Queen's summer home, in November 1980.

Here we see Lady Diana Spencer and Camilla Parker-Bowles walking together at Ludlow Races, where Prince Charles was competing in 1980. This was during the early days of their courtship, but the woman who would go on to become The Duchess of Cornwall and eventually Camilla, Queen Consort, was already an important figure in his life.

On 6 February 1981, Prince Charles, heir apparent to the throne, proposed to the 19-year-old Lady Diana Spencer and it was made official a few weeks later. Media interest in the future princess intensified even further, and there were often press photographers camped outside her door. She left the flat at Coleherne Court for good the night before her engagement was announced and her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, is reported to have sold the property for £100,000 ($123k) that same year.

Diana and Charles began making public appearances together, starting with this fundraiser in Goldsmiths' Hall in March 1981. Following their official engagement, Diana left her job as a nursery assistant and moved into Clarence House to prepare for their wedding that summer. 

The move into Clarence House symbolised Diana's journey from a member of the lower aristocracy to a fully-fledged royal. Located on The Mall in Westminster, London, the house was built in the 1820s by renowned architect John Nash for the Duke of Clarence. It stands next to St James' Palace but offers a much more informal and comfortable living experience for the royals.

Clarence House was the Queen and Prince Philip's first home following their marriage in 1947, and was where they raised the Prince of Wales as a young child. From 1953, it was first and foremost the royal residence of the Queen Mother, who was living there during the period of her engagement that Diana spent at the house. It is currently the the London base of King Charles lll and Camilla, Queen Consort. 

While Diana spent the night before her wedding at Clarence House, she also lived for a while at Buckingham Palace itself. Diana lived at the world-famous royal address while the huge preparations were underway for what was set to be one of the biggest royal weddings in history.

The 20-year-old Diana married 32-year-old Prince Charles at St Paul's Cathedral on 29 July 1981. The fairytale wedding was watched by a global audience of around 750 million people, while more than half a million people lined the streets of London to catch sight of the new princess in her glorious 25-foot wedding train. This kiss on the balcony of Buckingham Palace has become one of the most recognisable royal photos of all time.

One of London's most historic addresses, Kensington Palace was purchased by William III as a country retreat in 1689. Since its beginnings as a Jacobean villa, the palace has gone through a number of transformations and has been home to some of the country’s most celebrated royals, including Queen Victoria, Princess Margaret and now Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge, Catherine. In 2018, newlyweds Prince Harry and Meghan Markle briefly resided on the estate too.

Following their wedding, Prince Charles and Princess Diana took up residence in Apartment 8, before Diana gave birth to William in 1982 and Harry in 1984. Their apartment is located within the quadrangle that sits between Clock Court and Ivy Cottage and was one of several royal apartments within the palace. 

Princess Diana’s desk, which sat in the living room, was surrounded by her personal keepsakes, including photographs of her children and her school tuck box. Though Diana is famously known to have struggled with the pressures of public royal life, she grew extremely fond of Kensington Palace, which she nicknamed KP.

A family photograph with the young Prince William taken in the living room of their Kensington Palace apartment suggests that the home was traditionally furnished, with blue patterned wallpaper, paintings and floral bouquets. In 2016, a royal spokesperson confirmed that Apartment 8 was to be used as a workspace for the then Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge's official responsibilities and charitable work.

Diana loved the calm of the gardens at Kensington Palace, and her favourite place was said to be the Sunken Garden. Formerly known as the Dutch Garden, it uses symmetrical, concentric borders of pretty planting around a small pool of water with benches and arbours to add private spots for contemplation. 

Charles and Diana split their time between Kensington Palace and their country estate, Highgrove House. Prince Charles bought the Gloucestershire country home in 1980 – the year before he married Diana – and they used it as a weekend country retreat. Princes William and Harry spent much of their childhood here and family snapshots show the pair riding a shetland pony around the grounds, led by their mother.

Pictured here on the steps of Highgrove, Diana reportedly wasn't a fan of the nine-bedroom property, which she thought was too small. During her time at the estate, the Princess is said to have frequently taken her young sons out shopping in the nearby towns of Tetbury and Cirencester and the royals became a familiar sight for local residents. Although Highgrove House is now officially owned by the Prince of Wales, the King and Queen Consort still use it as a country house. 

As a prominent royal couple, Prince Charles and Princess Diana had many official duties to perform that kept them away from home, including tours of the Commonwealth countries. Diana made headlines in 1983 when she took the still-young Prince William with her on their trip to Australia.

As the years wore on following Harry's birth in 1984, Charles and Diana became further and further estranged. By 1992, following a tour of South Korea, the couple were ready to split and Prince Charles moved out of Kensington Palace into St James' Palace and then Clarence House, where he still lives with his second wife, Camilla, Queen Consort.

Despite their differences, Charles and Diana were able to share the parenting responsibilities of their two boys, showing up for William's first day at Eton here in 1995. After her divorce in 1996, Diana chose to remain in Apartment 8 and continued to raise her sons there until her untimely death in 1997. 

Even following the divorce in 1996, Diana was allowed to retain use of the apartment in Kensington Palace and, as the mother of the heir to the throne, she was also permitted to use the title Diana, Princess of Wales. She continued to dedicate her life to charitable work and travel the world, while using London as her base to raise her sons.

In 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, was tragically killed in a car accident in Paris. Kensington Palace was deluged by a sea of floral tributes. Recent reports that Netflix plan to show scenes of Diana’s mangled car in the upcoming series six of The Crown saw the show lambasted as distasteful and distressing for her sons. Makers of the programme insist, however, they will not show the exact moment of the deadly crash.

Following Diana's tragic death in a car crash in 1997, aged 36, a funeral was held at Westminster Abbey and her remains were buried on an island in an ornamental lake known as The Oval in the grounds of Althorp House. The burial site is off limits but you can visit a temple nearby which features a quote from the princess, saying: “Nothing brings me more happiness than trying to help the most vulnerable people in society.”

The temple also features an inscription of the Earl’s stirring speech at Diana’s funeral. Earl Spencer has been fiercely protective of his sister’s memory since her death, just recently blasting Donald Trump for saying she and the late Queen Elizabeth ll “kissed his a**” in a new book. The Earl tweeted in response that Diana was in fact less than impressed with the former US President.

A statue in honour of the princess, commissioned by her sons, was unveiled in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace on what would have been her 60th birthday in 2021. A joint statement from Kensington Palace said: "The Princes hope the statue will help all those who visit Kensington Palace to reflect on their mother’s life and legacy."

Though decades may have passed since she died, love for and interest in Diana is as strong today as it ever was. Many of her famous outfits are on display at Kensington Palace, including her wedding dress, and she lives on through her sons who continue to honour her memory through their own ongoing charity work.

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