Hampton Court Palace
Hampton Court Palace on the Thames near Kingston is one of the greatest and most historically resonant royal palaces in England, a complex of buildings spanning five centuries from the Tudor masterpiece built by Cardinal Wolsey and expanded by Henry VIII to the baroque state apartments added by William III and Mary II at the end of the seventeenth century. The juxtaposition of Tudor and baroque architecture within a single working palace is unique in England and makes Hampton Court an architectural experience of exceptional variety and richness.
Cardinal Wolsey began building Hampton Court in 1515 as an expression of his enormous personal wealth and political power, creating a palace of such luxury that Henry VIII demanded it from him in 1528 when its magnificence became an embarrassment to the crown. Henry's subsequent development of the complex, adding the magnificent Great Hall, the enormous kitchens capable of feeding a court of over six hundred people twice daily, and the tennis court, created the principal Tudor royal residence in England. Every Tudor monarch used Hampton Court and the palace's association with the full drama of Tudor history, from the births and deaths of royal children to the honeymoons of successive queens, gives it an historical depth matched by no other royal building in England.
William III and Mary II commissioned Christopher Wren to rebuild the Tudor state apartments in the baroque style, adding the south and east wings with their grand state rooms decorated by Verrio's painted ceilings, Gibbons's carved woodwork and the finest Dutch and Flemish paintings of the royal collection. The combination of the Tudor and baroque ranges around the successive courtyards creates a building of remarkable historical layering.
The gardens include the famous maze of 1690, the Great Vine of 1769, the formal Privy Garden and the Wilderness, and the Thames frontage provides an exceptional setting for the whole complex.