London
London
+ Central London
Sights
* Apsley House
* Banqueting House
* BBC Experience
* British Airways London Eye
* Buckingham Palace
* Cabinet War Rooms
* Chelsea
* Clink Exhibition
* Courtauld Gallery
* Design Museum
* Dickens House Museum
* Docklands
* Fleet Street
* Guildhall
* Hampstead
* Harrods
* HMS Belfast
* Highgate
* Hyde Park
* Imperial War Museum
* Inns of Court
* Jermyn Street
* Jewel Tower
* Kensington Palace and Kensington Gardens
* Kenwood House
* Leighton House
* Lloyd's Building
* London Aquarium
* London Dungeon
* London Planetarium
* London Transport Museum
* London Zoo
* Madame Tussaud's
* Monument
* Museum of Childhood, Bethnal Green
* Museum of London
* National Army Museum
* National Portrait Gallery
* Oxo Tower
* Piccadilly Circus
* Regent's Park
* Royal Academy (of Arts)
* St Bartholomew-the-Great
* St Bride
* St James's Palace
* St James's Park
* St James's Piccadilly
* St James's Street
* St Katharine's Dock
* St Stephen Walbrook
* Shakespeare's Globe Exhibition
* Sir John Soane's Museum
* Soho
* Southwark Cathedral
* Spencer House
* Tate Britain and Tate Modern
* Theatre Museum
* Tower Bridge
* Trafalgar Square
* Wallace Collection
* Westminster Cathedral
* Whitehall
* Winston Churchill's Britain at War
Vicinity
+ Vicinity
Walk/Drive
Food&Drink
In The Know
Did You Know?
( Worth Seeing )
The Banqueting House is the only surviving part of Henry VIII's great Whitehall Palace, which burned down in 1698. Designed in classical style by Inigo Jones, it was completed in 1622 and is famous for its magnificent ceiling painting by Rubens. This huge work was commissioned by Charles I to celebrate the wisdom of the reign of the Stuart dynasty and depicts his father, James I. It was therefore to provide an ironic backdrop to the events of 30 January 1649 when Charles, defeated in the English Civil War, stepped out from a window of the Banqueting House on to a scaffold to face the executioner's axe.
The vaulted undercroft, formerly the wine cellar of James I, is also open to the public.
Address: Whitehall
Phone: (020) 7930 4179 WEBSITE: www.hrp.org.uk
Open: Mon-Sat 10-5. Closed 24-26 Dec, 1 Jan, Good Fri, all public hols
Restaurant: Café-in-the-Crypt, St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square (Inexpensive)
Metro: Westminster, Embankment
Accessible: Only undercroft accessible
Admission: Moderate
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