The 10 Most Opulent Palaces in The World

The imperial palace at the centre of Beijing, 180 acres of vermilion walls and yellow-tiled roofs that housed twenty-four emperors across the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Nearly a thousand surviving buildings run along a single axis from the Meridian Gate to the Hall of Supreme Harmony.

Daily numbers are capped and tickets routinely sell out.

A Romanticist fantasy on a crag above Sintra, painted in egg-yolk yellow and vermilion with Moorish domes, Manueline carving and a mythological triton over the main arch.

Built in the 1840s on the ruins of a monastery, it stands high enough that cloud regularly drifts through the terraces.

The park below runs to eighty-five hectares.

The Alhambra is a palace and fortress complex built by the Moorish rulers of Granada in the 13th and 14th centuries, representing the pinnacle of Islamic art in Europe.

Its intricate geometric tilework, carved stucco, horseshoe arches, and reflecting pools are set against the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada.

The walled royal compound on the Chao Phraya, built in 1782 and still used for state ceremony, where gilded chedis and mirrored-glass spires crowd against one another.

Wat Phra Kaew inside holds the Emerald Buddha, carved from a single block of jade and dressed in seasonal gold robes.

The dress code is strictly enforced at the gate.

Peter the Great's answer to Versailles on the Gulf of Finland, where a Grand Cascade of 64 fountains and 200 gilded statues drops from the palace terrace into a canal running out to the sea.

The whole system is gravity fed and uses no pumps at all.

The fountains are switched on with ceremony each spring and shut off in October.

The Habsburgs 1,441-room summer residence in Vienna, its ochre facade facing formal parterres that climb to the Gloriette on the ridge behind.

Forty rooms are open, among them the Hall of Mirrors where a six-year-old Mozart is said to have played for Maria Theresa.

The grounds also hold the oldest surviving zoo in the world.

The seat of the Wadiyar dynasty, rebuilt in 1912 in an Indo-Saracenic style that stacks pink marble domes, arcades and stained glass into something deliberately theatrical.

On Sunday evenings and throughout the Dasara festival, close to a hundred thousand bulbs outline the entire building.

Inside, the Durbar Hall is a field of painted columns.

The Ottoman court's headquarters for four centuries, spread across four courtyards on the point where the Bosphorus meets the Golden Horn.

The Imperial Hall and the tiled chambers of the Harem are the visual highlights; the treasury holds the Topkapi dagger and the Spoonmaker's Diamond.

The terraces give the best free view of the strait.

The Palace of Versailles was the principal residence of French royalty from 1682 until the Revolution and remains the most visited château in the world.

The Hall of Mirrors, Louis XIV's formal gardens, and the Grand Trianon create an overwhelming display of royal opulence stretching across 800 hectares.

The monarch's London residence, a 775-room block behind the gilded Victoria Memorial gates where the Changing of the Guard draws a crush most mornings.

The State Rooms open for ten weeks each summer, when visitors can walk the Throne Room and the Picture Gallery.

For the rest of the year the railings are as close as anyone gets.