The VERY intriguing real reason that King Charles is speaking at this hospital chapel, revealed by Royal expert ROBERT HARDMAN
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At the end of what has, by any standards, been an extraordinary royal year, the King has chosen an appropriately unusual if intriguing venue for this year’s Christmas broadcast. Rather than address the nation and the Commonwealth from a favourite corner of a royal residence, he will speak from a small red-brick chapel hidden up a pedestrian alley behind an office block in London’s West End.
![[Although the King had never visited prior to recording his broadcast, he was instantly struck by photographs of the interior, which has been acclaimed as an architectural hidden gem]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/24/01/93437891-14222523-Although_the_King_had_never_visited_prior_to_recording_h_London_-a-31_1735002895448.jpg)
The choice of the Fitzrovia Chapel would certainly seem eccentric when it is viewed from the outside: a narrow Victorian structure surrounded by artificial grass, with no obvious religious function beyond its stained-glass windows. However, this conceals an exuberant interior of marble and mosaics inspired by Byzantine church architecture. It also turned out to fit the bill perfectly as the King looked for somewhere which would tick several boxes.
Given that 2024 has been a royal year marked by medical challenges, with a diagnosis of cancer for both the King and the Princess of Wales, the monarch wanted somewhere with a healthcare link. Originally built as the chapel for the Middlesex Hospital, the Fitzrovia is all that remains of that famous medical institution. Over the years, medical staff along with the sick, the dying, the bereaved would seek solace in there. Many medical marriages have set forth from these walls.
