Banqueting house whitehall palace

One of the few remaining parts of the old royal Palace of Whitehall is the Banqueting House, one of the first buildings in England to be built in the Palladian style. Visit to see the remarkable ceiling paintings by Rubens commissioned by King Charles I in the 1630s.
The Banqueting House, Whitehall, London, 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 building 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 Palladio, the Banqueting House was completed in 1622 at a cost of £15,618, 27 years before King Charles I of England was executed 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 Government or the Crown
The Palace of Whitehall was largely the creation of King Henry VIII, expanding an earlier mansion that had belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, originally 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.[6] All evidence of the disgraced Wolsey was eliminated and the building rechristened the Palace of Whitehall.