Orders, decorations, and medals of the United Kingdom at each Investiture. The Queen usually conducts the investitures, although the Prince of Wales, The Princess Royal or, more recently, the Duke of Cambridge also hold some investitures on behalf of the Queen. During the ceremony, the Queen enters the ballroom of Buckingham Palace attended by two Gurkha orderly officers, a tradition begun in 1876 by Queen Victoria. On duty on the dais are five members of the Queen's Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard, which was created in 1485 by Henry VII; they are the oldest, but not most senior, military corps in the United Kingdom. Four
Buckingham Palace high and contains over of floorspace. The floor area is smaller than the Royal Palace of Madrid, the Papal Palace and Quirinal Palace in Rome, the Louvre in Paris, the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, and the Forbidden City. There are 775 rooms, including 188 staff bedrooms, 92 offices, 78 bathrooms, 52 principal bedrooms, and 19 state rooms. It also has a post office, cinema, swimming pool, doctor's surgery, and jeweller's workshop. The principal rooms are contained on the "piano nobile" behind the west-facing garden façade at the rear of the palace. The centre of this ornate suite of state rooms