Mansion House

About Mansion House

Official residence of the Lord Mayor of London

The Mansion House is the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London, the annually elected head of the City of London Corporation, standing in the heart of the financial district opposite the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange. Designed by George Dance the Elder in the Palladian style, it was built mainly in the 1740s and completed in 1753; it is a Grade I listed building with a facade of six Corinthian columns and a raised portico, and inside lies the grand columned Egyptian Hall, where the great banquets are held, gilded reception rooms and a collection of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish paintings known as the Harold Samuel Collection. The building is used for some of the City of London's most formal official functions, including two annual white-tie dinners: the Easter banquet, at which the Foreign Secretary is the main speaker and receives a reply from the Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, the longest-serving ambassador, and the early June dinner at which the Chancellor of the Exchequer gives the annual "Mansion House Speech" on the state of the British economy; the most famous was David Lloyd George's speech of 1911 warning the German Empire against opposing British influence in the run-up to the First World War. The building also houses a working magistrates' court. As a working residence and venue for official functions it is visited only on limited guided tours or on open days, and it is a striking stop on a walk through the historic City.

Where:

London, United Kingdom