Queen's House

About Queen's House

Historic house museum in London, UK

Queen's House is a former royal residence in the London borough of Greenwich that now serves as a public art gallery. It was built between 1616 and 1635 on the grounds of the now demolished Greenwich Palace, a few miles downriver from the City of London, and today forms the central focus of the Old Royal Naval College with a grand vista leading to the River Thames, within the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site. Its architect, Inigo Jones, was commissioned by Queen Anne of Denmark, consort of James I, and her successor as queen consort, Henrietta Maria; the house was a royal retreat and a place to display and enjoy the artworks the queens had commissioned, including the Great Hall ceiling with Orazio Gentileschi's Allegory of Peace and the Arts. Queen's House is one of the most important buildings in British architectural history as the first consciously classical building constructed in the country, Jones's first major commission after his 1613–1615 grand tour of Roman, Renaissance and Palladian architecture in Italy. Earlier English houses such as Longleat and Burghley had borrowed classical elements without understanding their precedents, so the house would have appeared revolutionary, and Jones is often credited with introducing Palladianism to England through it. Its most celebrated features are the cube-shaped Great Hall with its geometric marble floor and the Tulip Stairs, the first self-supporting spiral staircase in Britain and one of the most photographed interiors in London. The house now holds the National Maritime Museum's fine art collection of maritime paintings and portraiture, including the famous Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I, alongside specially commissioned contemporary works, according to Wikivoyage.

Where:

London, United Kingdom