Power & Politics

A political history of Britain in the places where it happened: parliament and palace, courts and counting houses, and the streets where people pushed back.

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Banqueting House, Whitehall

The room built to prove that kings are divine, and the window a king was led through to the scaffold.

Monarchy

Photo by traveljunction, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Also in Museums.

Inigo Jones finished it in 1622 in a severe classical style then startlingly new in England, as the one grand set-piece of Whitehall Palace - and the only part of it left standing. Charles I commissioned Rubens to fill the ceiling with the apotheosis of his father James I: monarchy as ordered, classical and God-given. On 30 January 1649 Charles walked the length of that room, underneath his own argument, and out to the scaffold. He had put on two shirts so that shivering in the January cold could not be mistaken for fear. Nowhere else in London sets the claim of absolute monarchy and the revolution against it so few feet apart.

Where
Whitehall, SW1A 2ER
Nearest station
Charing Cross · 4 min walk

Hours

Monday10:00 – 13:00
Tuesday10:00 – 17:00
Wednesday10:00 – 17:00
Thursday10:00 – 17:00
Friday10:00 – 16:00
Saturday10:00 – 17:00
Sunday10:00 – 17:00

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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