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Tuesday, May 23, 2023

05-22-2023-2244 - The Palace of Whitehall (also spelled White Hall)

Palace of Whitehall
The Old Palace of Whitehall by Hendrik Danckerts.jpg
The Old Palace of Whitehall by Hendrick Danckerts, c. 1675.[1] The view is from the west, in St. James's Park. The Horse Guards barracks are on the extreme left, with the taller Banqueting House behind it. The four-towered building left of centre is the palace gatehouse, the "Holbein Gate".[2]
LocationCity of Westminster, Middlesex, Kingdom of England
Coordinates51°30′16″N 00°07′32″W
Builtc. 1240, 15–17th cent.
Demolished1698 (due to fire)

Palace of Whitehall is located in Central London
Palace of Whitehall
Location of the Palace of Whitehall in central London
Inigo Jones's plan, dated 1638, for a new palace at Whitehall, which was only realised in part.

The Palace of Whitehall (also spelled White Hall) at Westminster was the main residence of the English monarchs from 1530 until 1698, when most of its structures, except notably Inigo Jones's Banqueting House of 1622, were destroyed by fire. Henry VIII moved the royal residence to White Hall after the old royal apartments at the nearby Palace of Westminster were themselves destroyed by fire. Although the Whitehall palace has not survived, the area where it was located is still called Whitehall and has remained a centre of government.

White Hall was at one time the largest palace in Europe, with more than 1,500 rooms, overtaking the Vatican, before itself being overtaken by the expanding Palace of Versailles, which was to reach 2,400 rooms.[3] The palace gives its name, Whitehall, to the street located on the site on which many of the current administrative buildings of the present-day British government are situated, and hence metonymically to the central government itself. At its most expansive, the palace extended over much of the area bordered by Northumberland Avenue in the north; to Downing Street and nearly to Derby Gate in the south; and from roughly the elevations of the current buildings facing Horse Guards Road in the west, to the then banks of the River Thames in the east (the construction of Victoria Embankment has since reclaimed more land from the Thames)—a total of about 23 acres (9.3 ha). It was about 710 yards (650 m) from Westminster Abbey.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Whitehall

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