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Wren's retirement home for old soldiers, founded by Charles II in 1682 and still lived in by three hundred veterans in scarlet, with a small museum and tours led by them.
Charles II founded the Royal Hospital in 1682, on the model of Louis XIV's Invalides in Paris and, by the story the pensioners still tell, at Nell Gwyn's prompting, as a home rather than a pension for soldiers broken by age or war; Christopher Wren built it over the next decade in brick and stone around a court that looks down to the river, with a chapel and a great hall facing each other under one portico. About three hundred Chelsea Pensioners live in it now, veterans who have given up their army pension for their board, the scarlet coat and the company, and they are the point of the place: the museum of the hospital's history is small, but the tours of the hall, the chapel and the courts are led by the men and women who eat and pray in them. Grinling Gibbons's gilded statue of the founder stands in the Figure Court, and on Founder's Day in June the pensioners parade round it wearing oak leaves. The grounds are open free on weekdays.
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