He decided to freshen things up
by remodelling many of the rooms in bright white and gold,
by then a standard colour scheme for royal palaces all over Europe.
The Victorian age was over.
But Victoria was commemorated by an enormous marble statue of her,
seated in imperial splendour at the front of the Palace.
When her grandson George V unveiled it in 1911,
it's said he was so pleased.
He knighted the sculptor, Thomas Brock, on the spot.
The Queen Victoria Memorial
is a tribute to the longest-reigning monarch in British history.
Victoria herself gazes outwards from the Palace
that she made the symbolic heart of the monarchy.
On the other three sides
are Truth, holding a mirror,
Justice, holding a sword,
and Motherhood, which looks back towards the Palace,
where Victoria raised her extended family.
And flying high above it all is the figure
which represented the true meaning of the Queen's name -
Victory.