Burlington House
Coordinates: 51°30′32″N 0°8′22″W / 51.50889°N 0.13944°W
Burlington House is a building on Piccadilly in London. It was originally a private Palladian mansion, and was expanded in the mid-19th century after being purchased by the British government. The main building is at the northern end of the courtyard and houses the Royal Academy, while five learned societies occupy the two wings on the east and west sides of the courtyard and the Piccadilly wing at the southern end. These societies, collectively known as the Courtyard Societies are:
Burlington House is most familiar to the general public as the venue for the Royal Academy's temporary art exhibitions.
The house was one of the earliest of a number of very large private residences built on the north side of Piccadilly, previously a country lane, from the 1660s onwards. The first version was begun by Sir John Denham about 1664. It was a red-brick double-pile hip-roofed mansion with a recessed centre, typical of the style of the time, or perhaps even a little old fashioned. Denham may have acted as his own architect, or he may have employed Hugh May, who certainly became involved in the construction after the house was sold in an incomplete state in 1667 to Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Burlington, from whom it derives its name. Burlington had the house completed.
In 1704 the house passed to the ten-year-old Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, who was to become the principal patron of the Palladian movement in England, and an architect in his own right. During Burlington's minority, c 1709 the second Countess, Lady Juliana, commissioned James Gibbs to reconfigure the staircase and make exterior alterations to the house, including a quadrant Doric colonnade which was later praised by Sir William Chambers as "one of the finest pieces of architecture". The colonnade separated the house from increasingly urbanized Piccadilly with a cour d'honneur. Inside, Baroque decorative paintings in the entrance hall and staircase by Sebastiano Ricci and Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini resulted in some of the richest interiors in London.
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