Greenwich

The former Royal Hospital for Seamen, the Queen's House, and Greenwich Park - one of the most highly prized ensembles in European architecture and landscape - today comprise the centrepiece of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site. This illustrated book, based on detailed documentary work and site survey by the Royal Commission of the Historical Monuments of England, is the first to present a thorough architectural and art historical account of the main surviving buildings on the site. New photographs of the buildings complement famous views painted by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century artists, and specially commissioned development drawings illustrate and clarify the often complex evolution of the buildings, which have not until now been well understood. In addition, an archaeological analysis illuminates the discussion of centuries of human alterations to this much-loved landscape.The book details the evolution of the main buildings of the Hospital (later the Royal Naval College and now the University of Greenwich), from the design and building stages overseen by Sir Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor, through the later contributions of Thomas Ripley, James Stuart, Benjamin West, and Joseph Kay. In a comprehensive discussion in Inigo Jones's Queen's House, the book considers not only the architect and the sumptuous interior decoration, but also the desires of patrons Queen Anne of Denmark and Queen Henrietta Maria. Descriptions of the later history of all the buildings on the site, the founding of the National Maritime Museum, and the creation of the buildings in the Park brings the history of this important location to the present day.