Inside Hampton Court Palace: The Great Hall, the Tudor Kitchens and William III's Apartments

Henry VIII began the Great Hall in 1532, and it was built to impress. He chose a hammerbeam roof, an old-fashioned medieval style, to echo the great halls of the kings before him, and the roof is dotted with small carved heads known as eavesdroppers.

Look closely at the wooden screen and the roof and you will find Anne Boleyn: her coat of arms, her falcon badge and the initials H and A carved together. The stained glass, showing Henry's ancestry, his six wives and Wolsey, was added in a restoration in the 1840s.

The walls are hung with the Abraham tapestries, woven in Brussels from wool, silk and gold and silver thread and first hung here in 1546. The hall fed the lower ranks of the household every day and was used for plays and masques. Shakespeare's company performed here for James I over Christmas and New Year in 1603 and 1604.

The kitchens were first built for Wolsey and expanded by Henry VIII around 1529. They turned out more than 800 meals a day for a court of about 1,200 people, with some 200 cooks, sergeants, grooms and pages, and burned around 1.3 million logs a year.

Each part had its job. The Boiling House made stews, pie fillings and boiled meat, the Great Kitchens roasted meat at six huge fireplaces, the cold Fish Court held stores and fiddly dishes, and the Wine Cellar kept the court's European wines. Food went out through the Serving Place.

The kitchens were used until George II's last stay in 1737, and later changes are still visible, from a 17th-century bread oven to a Victorian iron range. A Spanish visitor in 1554 called them veritable hells, and noted that there was plenty of beer.

On Sundays and holy days Henry VIII walked in procession from his private rooms to the Chapel Royal, a formal occasion watched by the court. That route is now lined with 16th-century paintings, among them The Family of Henry VIII of about 1545, showing the king with Jane Seymour and Prince Edward, and copies of Holbein's lost mural from Whitehall Palace.

Part of the route is known as the Haunted Gallery. The story goes that in 1541 Catherine Howard broke away from her guards here and ran towards the chapel to beg for mercy, before being dragged back. The route ends at the Chapel Royal, and it is all included in a palace visit.