Althorp House, home to the Spencer family for five centuries, is currently owned by Charles Spencer, the 9th Earl of Spencer and brother to the late Lady Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales. This elegant house, located in England's East Midlands, contains some 100,000 square feet of interior space and 31 bedrooms. The home sits on an estate of 14,000 acres — an area approximately the size of Manhattan. Though this current structure is a couple of centuries newer, the original house on the estate dates to the year 1508, when the Tudors still ruled England. In more recent times, guests to the home have included Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Winston Churchill and nearly every British king and queen for the past 400 years.

This exterior view of the mansion is a favorite of Charles, the present Earl of Spencer. Though it's famous as a historic and ancestral family home, most of the world knows Althorp as the final resting place of the late and much-beloved Princess Diana. She is buried on a tree-covered island in a small lake near the main house. More than 30,000 people make pilgrimages to the site annually, but visitors may pay homage to the late princess only from the water's edge. No one is allowed to set foot on the island without special permission, and Diana's actual grave is unmarked. A path leading from the house to the lake is lined by a row of 36 oak trees planted by Diana's brother Charles — one tree to commemorate each year of Diana's life.

Charles, the current Earl Spencer, stands on the 340-year-old staircase in the entry space known as the Saloon. In the original Tudor structure, this space was actually an open courtyard. It was enclosed and turned into this magnificent room in the 1670s.

Though it's not the largest, the picture gallery is perhaps the grandest room in the Althorp house. This room was originally designed to allow the lady residents of the house to take exercise during inclement weather. (Exercise consisted simply of walking back and forth along the room's 115-foot span.) Some of the Spencer family portraits in the home's collection date back as far as 19 generations, including a portrait of William Spencer, born in the year 1496.