The Royal Pavilion in Brighton: A Seaside Fantasy Dressed as a Palace

There are palaces, and then there’s the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. It doesn’t just flirt with eccentricity—it full-on elopes with it. At first glance, you might think you’ve taken a wrong turn and ended up in Rajasthan rather than a British seaside town. Domes, minarets, onion spires, and dragons—yes, dragons—all waiting to greet you like a confused architectural committee that got very drunk on colonial fantasy.

The man behind this flamboyant fever dream? George IV. Back when he was still the Prince of Wales, he decided that if he was going to escape London and his dreary royal duties, it would be to somewhere with sea air and zero architectural restraint. Brighton was fashionable, the sea was supposedly good for gout, and he fancied himself a bit of an eastern emperor.

George didn’t just hire any old architect. He called in John Nash, the man who would later design Buckingham Palace. Clearly, Nash took this one as a creative warm-up. Inspired by Indo-Islamic architecture with a bit of Chinese interior design, the Pavilion was a riot of Orientalism with no actual understanding of the cultures it was mimicking. But hey, it looked exotic enough for a bored prince.

Inside, things only get more absurd. Imagine chandeliers hanging from lotus flowers. Imagine entire rooms dedicated to wallpaper. Dragons curling across walls. Palm trees where you don’t expect them. Furniture that seems less designed for sitting and more for being admired from a respectful distance, perhaps with a monocle and a scandalous whisper.

It didn’t begin this outrageously. The original version, built in the late 18th century, was a fairly modest farmhouse. George being George, modesty didn’t last. In stages, The Royal Pavilion expanded like a teenager experimenting with style—a touch of chinoiserie here, a fake Mughal dome there.

George loved the place so much he threw royal cash at it like it was going out of fashion. He hosted lavish dinners, scandalous parties, and generally used it as a haven for doing things he shouldn’t in the company of people he shouldn’t be doing them with. It was a sort of royal bachelor pad with peacocks and curry.

Speaking of curry: George IV had a thing for Indian food. It wasn’t just the décor that shouted “exotic”. The Pavilion had an Indian chef, Sake Dean Mahomed, who served up early Anglo-Indian dishes for Brighton’s confused aristocracy, some of whom probably thought coriander was French.

One of the most iconic rooms is the Banqueting Room, and oh, what a room. That chandelier? It weighs a tonne—literally—and dangles from a silvered dragon’s claws. Try eating your beef consommé under that thing without contemplating your will.

The Music Room might be even more surreal. Ten lotus-shaped chandeliers, eight mirrors, gilded palm trees, and a dome ceiling painted to resemble a starry sky. Even the organ is dramatic, which seems fitting given George’s love of opera and theatre.

When Queen Victoria came to power, she took one look at this architectural daydream and decided, quite sensibly, that it wasn’t exactly her vibe. She didn’t fancy seaside weekends surrounded by gilded dragons and faux-Mughal domes. In 1850, she sold it to the town of Brighton.

Brighton, understandably thrilled, kept The Royal Pavilion as a civic monument. But Victoria did take a few bits with her—pillaged chandeliers, decorative fireplaces, things she felt better suited to actual palaces. In a surprising twist, much of it has since been returned, so you can now enjoy George’s campy maximalism in all its restored glory.

During World War I, the Pavilion had a completely unexpected encore: it served as a hospital for Indian soldiers wounded on the Western Front. Imagine convalescing in that Music Room, surrounded by lotus lights and palm tree motifs while nurses delivered quinine. The British Empire loved irony.

Some of the patients reportedly thought they’d been shipped back to India, so accurate (or at least theatrical) was the decor. Others were less amused. The Pavilion was luxurious but still a long way from home and a long, long way from peace.

Rumour has it The Royal Pavilion is haunted. George IV, being a man of appetites, is said to still roam the halls, possibly searching for another bottle of port or a scandal. Or maybe he just misses the chandeliers.

The building’s upkeep is as complex as its past. It costs a fortune to maintain all those domes and dragons, and every so often they need to be restored. In the early 2000s, one restoration project involved gently cleaning the chandelier with cotton buds. No pressure there.

Artists and writers have always been fascinated by the Pavilion. Virginia Woolf gave it a wry nod in her diaries. Oscar Wilde apparently adored its kitsch madness. Modern pop stars have shot music videos there. If David Bowie had designed a palace, this would be it.

The Pavilion gardens are a reimagined Regency landscape, and that means they’re perfectly symmetrical and obsessively managed. They’re also popular with seagulls, which couldn’t care less about Regency order and have no sense of architectural reverence.

Beneath all the flamboyance lies a fascinating contradiction. The Royal Pavilion is a symbol of imperial nostalgia, yes, but also of escapism, fantasy, and sheer architectural cheek. It reflects the insecurities of an empire and the indulgence of a man who desperately wanted to be interesting.

There was once a plan to connect the Pavilion to the sea with a secret tunnel, so George could sneak in and out without being spotted. It didn’t happen, but it tells you a lot about his priorities: discretion and decadence, preferably at the same time.

Brighton has fully embraced the Pavilion’s weirdness. It’s now part of the city’s DNA. Punk rockers, drag queens, and bohemian artists pose for photos there, proving that a royal folly can become a democratic icon.

In recent years, The Royal Pavilion hosted exhibitions on everything from Queen Victoria’s fashion to Indian textiles. Turns out the building is quite flexible when it isn’t just trying to be a 19th-century fever dream.

You can get married in the Pavilion. That’s right. You can tie the knot under those glittering chandeliers with dragons looking on. It’s perfect if your wedding theme is “colonial kitsch meets fairy-tale absurdity”.

There’s a secret room above the Music Room dome, which isn’t open to the public. Some say it’s for structural reasons, others whisper it’s where George hid the really good port.

Every inch of the Pavilion is steeped in glorious overstatement. It wasn’t built for subtlety. It was built to shock, seduce, and distract—just like its creator.

And yet, it works. Somehow, through all the architectural bravado and imperial cosplay, the Royal Pavilion remains one of Britain’s most beloved oddities. A seaside temple to excess. A folly with feathers. A royal retreat that became a people’s palace—and never stopped being entertaining.