At which abbey was Queen Victoria crowned?

Queen Victoria was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 28 June 1838. The ceremony took place just over a year after she succeeded William IV as queen of the United Kingdom.

Westminster Abbey had been the traditional setting for English and British coronations since William the Conqueror’s coronation in 1066. Its association with royal ceremonies, medieval kingship, and Saint Edward’s Crown made it the symbolic centre of the coronation rite.

Victoria travelled from Buckingham Palace in the Gold State Coach, originally made for George III in 1762. Large crowds gathered along the route, and the procession through London was a major public spectacle. Around 400,000 people were estimated to have come to the capital for the event.

The ceremony was famously imperfect: there was little rehearsal, and several mistakes and delays occurred. The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Howley, presided. Victoria’s coronation was therefore both a historic religious service and an early example of monarchy presented as mass public theatre.