Hampton Court Palace

Hampton Court is two palaces in one: a red-brick Tudor palace of turreted gatehouses, twisted chimneys and a great hall, and, grafted onto it, a Baroque palace by Sir Christopher Wren built to answer Versailles. Set beside the Thames about 19 km south-west of central London, it was begun in 1514 by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Henry VIII's chief minister, who meant it to be the finest house in England. In 1529, with his fall from favour approaching, Wolsey handed it to the king; he died the following year.

Wolsey's work survives in the Base Court and the gatehouse to the Clock Court, where relief busts of Roman emperors by the Italian sculptor Giovanni da Maiano are set into the brickwork. Henry VIII turned the house into one of his favourite residences, quadrupling the kitchens to feed a court of more than a thousand people and adding, between 1532 and 1535, the Great Hall with its carved hammerbeam roof — the last medieval great hall built for an English monarch. The gatehouse carries an astronomical clock made in 1540 that still shows the hour, the phases of the moon, the zodiac and the time of high water at London Bridge, once essential for anyone arriving by barge. Edward VI was born here in 1537, and his mother Jane Seymour died here about two weeks later. Legend holds that Catherine Howard, Henry's fifth wife, broke away from her guards and ran down a gallery to plead with the king before being dragged back; the passage is still called the Haunted Gallery. In 1604 James I met Puritan leaders here, and the Hampton Court Conference led to the commissioning of the King James Bible.

From 1689 William III and Mary II had Wren replace half the Tudor palace with new state apartments around the Fountain Court: long façades of pink brick and pale Portland stone, with round windows under a level skyline. The King's Staircase was painted by Antonio Verrio, with delicate ironwork by Jean Tijou, and Grinling Gibbons and James Thornhill were among the artists who decorated the rooms. The palace was later the home of "grace and favour" residents, among them Michael Faraday, and opened to the public in 1838. Its rooms hold works from the Royal Collection, above all Andrea Mantegna's Triumphs of Caesar, and the gardens contain the famous hedge maze, a royal tennis court and the Great Vine planted in 1763.

Getting there

The palace stands on the north bank of the Thames opposite East Molesey, about 1 km away across Hampton Court Bridge. Hampton Court railway station, opened in 1849 at the end of a branch line from London Waterloo, is on the East Molesey side of the bridge. London Heathrow Airport (LHR) is about 11 km away.