Banqueting house

Banqueting House (Whitehall). The Banqueting House is one of the finest rooms in the country. Built by Inigo Jones for James I, between 1619 and 1622, it was one of the few buildings to survive the fire at Whitehall palace in 1698. The ceiling was finished in 1634 by Rubens and is largely devoted to themes illustrating the wisdom and virtue of James I: its baroque exuberance is in strange contrast with the restraint of the hall. From this building Charles I stepped through a window to the scaffold in 1649. Cromwell declined the crown there in 1657 and William and Mary accepted it there in 1689.

Banqueting House, Whitehall, London

In Tudor and Early Stuart English architecture a banqueting house is a separate building reached through pleasure gardens from the main residence, whose use is purely for entertaining. It may be raised for additional air or a vista, and it may be richly decorated, but it contains no bedrooms or kitchens. The best known example is the Banqueting House on Whitehall. Its contemporary Italian equivalent was a casina.

This architecture-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)