London ? Prince Charles is letting the public tour his new digs at Clarence House — a stately home for him and his sons, with a room reserved for longtime love Camilla Parker Bowles.

The early 19th century house was the home of Charles’ grandmother, the Queen Mother Elizabeth, for nearly 50 years. The public paid $7 million to refurbish the home, with the prince chipping in another $2.6 million for decorations.

Parts of Clarence House open to the public for the first time today, while the family is away for the summer holiday. Small tour groups will be guided around five rooms on the ground floor until Oct. 17, when it becomes a private home again for Charles and his sons, Princes William and Harry.

All 46,000 of the tickets for the summer opening had been sold by Tuesday afternoon.

The move Monday from Charles’ previous home in York House at St. James’s Palace couldn’t have been much easier. The brick palace adjoins Clarence House, and the family wouldn’t even have had to leave the grounds to get from one home to the next. Just yards from the bustling traffic that swirls around Buckingham Palace, the house has a tranquil air in its brick-walled setting of lush green lawn and flower borders.

Clarence House, though never a tourist attraction like Buckingham Palace, was a favorite gathering place for the legions of admirers of the queen mother, who died last year at 101. It was a familiar place to her grandchildren, especially Charles.

The graceful, cream-colored building remains very much a home, and is not at all palatial, despite the antique furniture and the many paintings that adorn the walls.

Prince Charles’ offices for his charity work are there, and the ground floor will be used to receive official guests, hold seminars, receptions and dinners. York House was small, without enough room for official entertaining, so the prince used Highgrove, his country house in western England, for receptions. But that involved a long trip out of London for guests.

Memories of a much-loved grandparent are everywhere at Clarence House, from the pale blue morning room with its French doors into the garden and its family portraits, to the Horse Corridor, where equine paintings and racing memorabilia are reminders the queen mother was an avid racehorse owner.

The Main Hall in Clarence House, which was the London residence of Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mother until her death last year, is now Prince Charles' home in London. From today until mid-October, members of the public can take a guided tour of the five rooms on the ground floor where official engagements will be held and VIP guests received.

A framed painting of her favorite corgi dogs is on a table in the morning room beneath an oil portrait of her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II, as a child. On the library shelves among books on art and history are P.G. Wodehouse’s novels, and thrillers by Dick Francis, who once was a jockey for the queen mother’s racing stables.

The house has happy memories. It was the first real home of the newly married Prince Philip and Princess Elizabeth before she became queen in 1952. Prince Charles was a toddler there, and Princess Anne was born in the house in 1950.

Built in the 1820s, the house got its name from the Duke of Clarence, third son of King George III. The duke was so happy there that when he became King William IV in 1830 he decided not to move into newly built Buckingham Palace.

For the next hundred or so years, royal relatives lived in Clarence House. During World War II, it was used as headquarters for the Red Cross and St. John Ambulance Brigade and suffered bomb damage.