Banqueting House

The Banqueting House, Whitehall, is the grandest and best known survivor of the architectural genre of banqueting house and the only remaining component of the Palace of Whitehall. The building is important in the history of English architecture as the first structure to be completed in the neo-classical style, which was to transform English architecture.

Begun in 1619 and designed by Inigo Jones in a style influenced by Andrea Palladio, the Banqueting House was completed in 1622 at a cost of £15,618, 27 years before King Charles I of England was beheaded on a scaffold in front of it in January 1649. The building was controversially re-faced in Portland stone in the 19th century, though the details of the original façade were faithfully preserved. Today, the Banqueting House is a national monument, open to the public and preserved as a Grade I listed building. It is cared for by an independent charity—Historic Royal Palaces—which receives no funding from the British government or the Crown.

The Palace of Whitehall was the creation of King Henry VIII, expanding an earlier mansion that had belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, known as York Place. The King was determined that his new palace should be the "biggest palace in Christendom", a place befitting his newly created status as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. All evidence of the disgraced Wolsey was eliminated and the building rechristened the Palace of Whitehall.

During Henry's reign, the palace had no designated banqueting house, the King preferring to banquet in a temporary structure purpose-built in the gardens. The Keeper of the Banqueting House was a position enhanced by Queen Mary I by designating it in relation to a building of the same name at Nonsuch Palace, near the south edge of Greater London, which has since been demolished and instead marks the site of a footpath junction of the London Loop. This house was used to entertain the French agent in London and ambassador Gilles de Noailles and his wife in 1556.

...
Wikipedia