The final dressing of the palace is underway, with all the furnishings and fittings being installed. It’s quite a moment in modern and historical terms. On the one hand it marks the near-completion of a £12 million project to refurbish Britain’s most complete Renaissance royal palace. And on the other it’s a reminder of the moment when this glorious building was originally completed in the early 1540s.

That was an event which James V, who had it built, never saw as it is thought he died before it was finished. However, James and his French queen, Mary of Guise, were there for Easter Sunday 1542 (which fell on 9 April) when things would have been in a pretty advanced state. He took Easter (known then as Pasche) very seriously as a religious occasion and, like his father James IV, tended to spend it at Stirling where it would be marked in the old Chapel Royal.

It would be interesting to know if the young king ever saw the statue of himself, with flowing beard and hand on dagger, which stares down from one of the outside walls. He must surely have been familiar with many of the Stirling Heads which we are currently placing in a specially-created gallery on the upper floor.  All 34 surviving heads, metre-round hand-carved oak medallions depicting kings, queens and courtly characters, will be on show there. It’s the first time they have all been together in the same place since being removed from the ceiling of the King’s Inner Hall in 1777.

The castle and palace were places of fun and laughter, as well as a centre of government and royal residence. So, while the couple were there to celebrate Easter, and to admire the progress on the new palace, they may have found time to be entertained by the likes of Jacques Collumbell, one of their minstrels whose children were sent to school in Stirling.

When we open the palace doors to visitors in June they will see what the palace might have looked like in the years after Mary of Guise, by then a widow, moved in during 1543. So there are beautiful brass candelabra, wonderful iron fire dogs, 3m tall tapestries, elaborate cloths of estate, plushly upholstered X-shaped chairs, painted cupboards and coffers, and hand-knotted rugs.

A particular delight will be the queen’s tester bed – what we know as a four poster. This would have been a centrepiece of Mary’s bedchamber. Indeed, it was not necessarily for anything as prosaic as sleeping in, but a feature in front of which someone of great wealth would welcome their most honoured guests. Ours will be rich with silk pile velvet, damask, taffetas and trimmings. Its coverlets are blue, while the curtains are violet. There are 70, or so, 3.5 inch tassels, decorating the scalloped valances, which hang from the upper bed frame, the design having been copied from the Kimberley throne, c.1578 that forms part of the Burrell Collection. Each tassel has been hand-made in Derby, using silk and gold metal thread.

Like all the decoration and furniture, the bed has been superbly researched and crafted. I look round the palace several times a week these days and am greeted with new delights on every visit. With everything now so close to completion, I’m really looking forward to being able to welcome you all inside to see how Scotland’s royalty once lived.