The Albert Memorial

This guide to the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens follows Queen Victoria's grief after Prince Albert's death in 1861, from the daily ritual of laying out his clothes at Windsor to her decision to commission a Gothic canopy from architect Sir George Gilbert Scott. It traces how public subscription funded the towering memorial, and lingers on the statue of Albert at its center, holding the catalogue from the Great Exhibition he organized in 1851. He faces south, toward the hall built partly in his memory.