Queen's House, Greenwich

The Queen's House is one of the most important buildings in British architectural history. It is the first consciously classical building to be erected in Britain. Its style is generally called Palladian, though its specific precedent is Giuliano da Sangallo's Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano. It was designed by architect Inigo Jones, and built in 1616-17 for Queen Anne of Denmark, the consort to King James I of England.

The Queen's House is located in Greenwich, London, England. It was an adjunct to the older Palace of Greenwich, previously known in Tudor times as the Palace of Placentia, a rambling, mainly red-brick building in a more vernacular style. The Queen's House was only used for seven years, before the English Civil War of 1642 swept away the court culture from which it sprang.

Although the House survived as an official building, the main palace was progressively demolished from the 1660s to 1690s and replaced by the Greenwich Hospital for Seamen, built 1696-1752 to the master-plan of Sir Christopher Wren. This is now called the Old Royal Naval College, after its later use from 1873 to 1998.

Queen Mary ordered that the view from Queen's House to the River Thames be retained. This could only be done through the demolition of the older Palace, requiring the Greenwich Hospital to be designed as two matching pairs separated by a grand space exactly the width of Queen's House, so the view is not blocked.

The architectural ensemble of Greenwich stretching from the Thames to Greenwich Park and is one of the principal features of Maritime Greenwich, inscribed by UNESCO in 1997 as a World Heritage Site.

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