Royal Pavilion wedding map print

George, Prince of Wales, first came to Brighton in 1783, aged 21, and his physician told him the sea air would help his gout. He rented a modest farmhouse facing the Old Steine, had Henry Holland enlarge it from 1787, and between 1815 and 1822 John Nash turned it into the Indian-style palace that survives, with interiors full of Chinese and Indian fancy.

Queen Victoria found Brighton too public and sold the Pavilion to the town in 1850 for £53,000. In the First World War it became a hospital, and from December 1914 to January 1916 more than 2,300 men of the Indian Army were treated here. In 1921 the Maharaja of Patiala unveiled a gateway in Indian style to remember them.

Around the pin the artwork lays out the town the prince made fashionable: the Pavilion Garden and the Brighton Dome beside it, once his riding school and stables, the narrow streets of the Lanes, and the seafront with the Palace Pier reaching out to sea. The streets of North Laine climb the slope behind, towards the railway station just out of the frame.