The area around Downing Street was home to ancient Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Norman settlements, and was already a prestigious centre of government 1,000 years ago. Take a virtual tour inside 10 Downing Street and explore it’s most famous rooms and significant events at the Google Cultural Institute. Number 10 has also spread itself out to the left of the front door, and has taken over much of 12 Downing Street, which is accessed by a corridor that runs through 11 Downing Street – the official residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The house in Downing Street was joined to a more spacious and elegant building behind it in the early 18th century. The hall with the chequered floor immediately behind the front door lets on to a warren of rooms and staircases. The building is much larger than it appears from its frontage. The Prime Minister hosts countless receptions and events for a whole range of British and overseas guests, with charitable receptions high up the list.
It is the official residence of the British Prime Minister: it is their office, and it is also the place where the Prime Minister has entertained guests from Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to presidents of the United States and other world leaders. Some of the most famous political figures of modern history have lived and worked in Number 10, including Robert Walpole, Pitt the Younger, Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. In the 20th century alone, the First and Second World Wars were directed from within it, as were the key decisions about the end of the empire, the building of the British nuclear bomb, the handling of economic crises from the Great Depression in 1929 to the great recession, and the building up of the welfare state. Behind its black door have been taken the most important decisions affecting Britain for the last 275 years.
10 Downing Street, the locale of British prime ministers since 1735, vies with the White House as being the most important political building anywhere in the world in the modern era.
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