UNESCO World Heritage Site | |
---|---|
Location | United Kingdom |
Includes |
|
Criteria | Cultural: (i), (ii), (iv), (vi) |
Reference | 795 |
Inscription | 1995 (19th Session) |
Extensions | 2008 |
Area | 109.5 hectares (271 acres) |
Buffer zone | 174.85 hectares (432.1 acres) |
Website | whc |
Coordinates | 51°29′1″N0°0′21″W / 51.48361°N 0.00583°W |
Location in the United Kingdom |
The Old Royal Naval College are buildings that serve as the architectural centrepiece of Maritime Greenwich, [1] a World Heritage Site in Greenwich, London, described by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) as being of "outstanding universal value" and reckoned to be the "finest and most dramatically sited architectural and landscape ensemble in the British Isles". [2] Formerly the site of a royal palace, the old college was originally constructed to serve as the Royal Navy's Greenwich Hospital, designed by Christopher Wren, and built between 1696 and 1712. [3] [4] The hospital closed in 1869 and so between 1873 and 1998 the buildings were used as a training establishment for the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. [5] The site is now managed by the Greenwich Foundation for the Old Royal Naval College, established in 1997 to conserve the buildings and grounds and convert them into a cultural destination. [6]
This was originally the site of Bella Court, built by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and subsequently renamed Palace of Placentia by Queen Margaret upon its confiscation by the Crown in the 15th century. Rebuilt by Henry VII, it was thenceforth more commonly known as Greenwich Palace. As such, it was the birthplace of Tudor monarchs Henry VIII, Mary I, and Elizabeth I, and reputedly the favourite palace of Henry VIII. The palace fell into disrepair during the English Civil War. With the exception of a then incomplete John Webb building, the palace was finally demolished in 1694, with the Webb building being completed and converted to use by the hospital.
In 1692 the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich was created on the site on the instructions of Mary II, who had been inspired by the sight of wounded sailors returning from the Battle of La Hogue. Initially, the hospital remodeled a wing of the unfinished Greenwich Palace, and then expanded and remade the design. Architectural highlights included the Chapel and the Painted Hall. The Painted Hall was painted between 1707 and 1726 by Sir James Thornhill. [7] The hospital closed in 1869 and the remains of thousands of sailors and officers were removed from the hospital site in 1875 and reinterred in East Greenwich Pleasaunce or "Pleasaunce Park". [8]
In 1873, four years after the hospital closed, the buildings were converted to a training establishment for the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy finally left the college in 1998 when the site passed into the hands of the Greenwich Foundation for the Old Royal Naval College.
Since 1998, the site has had new life breathed into it through a mix of new uses and activities and a revival of the historic old site under the management and control of the Greenwich Foundation. The buildings are Grade I listed. In 1999 some parts of Queen Mary and King William, and the whole of Queen Anne and the Dreadnought Building were leased for 150 years by the University of Greenwich. In 2000 Trinity College of Music leased the major part of King Charles. This created a unique new educational and cultural mix.
In 2002, the Foundation realised its aim of opening up the whole site to visitors. It opened the Painted Hall, the chapel and the grounds and a visitor centre to the public daily, free of charge, with guided tours available. The Old Royal Naval College became open to students and visitors of all ages and nationalities accompanied often by music wafting from Trinity College. As Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in 1863, "the people are sooner or later the legitimate inheritors of whatever beauty kings and queens create". [9]
In 2005, the room where Nelson's coffin was held prior to his being laid-in-state was opened as the Nelson Room. The little side room contains a statue of Nelson replicating the one in Trafalgar Square, memorabilia, paintings and information. It can be seen on one of the guided tours that also include a visit to the undercrofts, the old skittle alley and crypt. A service is held in the chapel every Sunday at 11 am which is open to all. Public concerts are regularly held here and a wide variety of business and cultural events are held in the Painted Hall. The area is used by visitors, students, local people and film crews in a traffic-free environment that provides a variety of coffee shops, bars and restaurants, all incorporated within the old buildings, as part of a unique "ancient and modern" blend that support 21st century life in Greenwich. [10]
The Old Royal Naval College and the "Maritime Greenwich" World Heritage site are becoming focal points for a wide range of business and community activities. Trinity College of Music provide a wide range of musicians and ensembles on a subsidised commercial basis to play at events throughout East London and beyond, part of their business and community "out-reach" policy encouraged and part-funded by the Higher Education Funding Council. [11]
The site is regularly used for filming television programmes, television advertisements, and feature films. [12] Productions have included The Bounty , where captain William Bligh portrayed by Anthony Hopkins is brought in a Chariot at the start of the film, and judged during subsequent scenes. Patriot Games , where an attack on a fictional royal family member, Lord Holmes, was filmed, as well as Shanghai Knights , and a 2006 television advertisement campaign for the British food and clothing retailer Marks & Spencer. Other films include Four Weddings and a Funeral , The Madness of King George , The Mummy Returns , The Avengers (1998), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), and Guy Ritchie's Revolver (2005). [13]
More recent filming has included BBC television's spy-drama Spooks and the dramatisation of Little Dorrit , David Cronenberg's film Eastern Promises , the film adaptation of Philip Pullman's novel Northern Lights and The Wolf Man (2009). The grounds were used extensively during the filming of 2006's Amazing Grace , and 2011's Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows , Now You See Me 2 and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides . Scenes were shot at the grounds for The King's Speech , where the site doubled for Buckingham Palace, and The Dark Knight Rises , where it doubled for a cafe in the film's final scenes. In April 2012 the site was used for the iconic barricade scenes in the film adaption of the musical Les Miserables . In October 2012 the college was used for filming Thor: The Dark World . In October 2013 the college was used as a set for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. . The college was a filming location for the first two seasons of the Netflix series The Diplomat (2023–present). [14]
In 2014, the Old Royal Naval College announced that it was embarking on the next stage of its ambitious plans to restore the Painted Hall. Over three years, 3,700 square metres (40,000 sq ft) of Thornhill's masterpiece was to be conserved. The conservation project focused on the Lower Hall (the Upper Hall having been conserved in 2013). [15] The project included a unique series of public 'ceiling tours' allowing members of the public to get up close to the painted ceiling and see conservators at work. [16] In March 2019, the hall reopened to the public, [17] [18] the project winning awards. [19] [20]
Hampton Court Palace is a Grade I listed royal palace in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, 12 miles southwest and upstream of central London on the River Thames. Opened to the public, the palace is managed by Historic Royal Palaces, a charity set up to preserve several unoccupied royal properties.
Greenwich is an area in south-east London, England, within the ceremonial county of Greater London. It is situated 5.5 miles (8.9 km) east-south-east of Charing Cross.
Sir James Thornhill was an English painter of historical subjects working in the Italian baroque tradition. He was responsible for some large-scale schemes of murals, including the "Painted Hall" at the Royal Hospital, Greenwich, the paintings on the inside of the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, and works at Chatsworth House and Wimpole Hall.
Trompe-l'œil is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. Trompe-l'œil, which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into perceiving painted objects or spaces as real. Forced perspective is a related illusion in architecture.
Greenwich Hospital was a permanent home for retired sailors of the Royal Navy, which operated from 1692 to 1869. Its buildings, initially Greenwich Palace, in Greenwich, London, were later used by the Royal Naval College, Greenwich and the University of Greenwich, and are now known as the Old Royal Naval College. The word "hospital" was used in its original sense of a place providing hospitality for those in need of it, and did not refer to medical care, although the buildings included an infirmary which, after Greenwich Hospital closed, operated as Dreadnought Seaman's Hospital until 1986.
Queen's House is a former royal residence in the London borough of Greenwich, which presently serves as a public art gallery. It was built between 1616 and 1635 on the grounds of the now demolished Greenwich Palace, a few miles downriver from the City of London. In its current setting, it forms a central focus of the Old Royal Naval College with a grand vista leading to the River Thames, a World Heritage Site called, Maritime Greenwich. The Queen's House architect, Inigo Jones, was commissioned by Queen Anne of Denmark in 1616 and again to finish the house in 1635 by Queen Henrietta Maria. The House was commissioned by both Anne and Henrietta as a retreat and place to display and enjoy the artworks they had accumulated and commissioned; this includes a ceiling of the Great Hall that features a work by Orazio Gentileschi titled Allegory of Peace and the Arts.
The Palace of Placentia, also known as Greenwich Palace, was an English royal residence that was initially built by prince Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, in 1443. Over the centuries it took several different forms, until turned into a hospital in the 1690s. The palace was a place designed for pleasure, entertainment and an escape from the city. It was located at Greenwich on the south bank of the River Thames, downstream from London.
Baroque architecture is a highly decorative and theatrical style which appeared in Italy in the late 16th century and gradually spread across Europe. It was originally introduced by the Catholic Church, particularly by the Jesuits, as a means to combat the Reformation and the Protestant church with a new architecture that inspired surprise and awe. It reached its peak in the High Baroque (1625–1675), when it was used in churches and palaces in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Bavaria and Austria. In the Late Baroque period (1675–1750), it reached as far as Russia, the Ottoman Empire and the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Latin America. In about 1730, an even more elaborately decorative variant called Rococo appeared and flourished in Central Europe.
Cutty Sarkfor Maritime Greenwich is a light metro station on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) Bank-Lewisham Line in Greenwich, south-east London, so named for its proximity to the Cutty Sark in the Maritime Greenwich district. It is the most central of the Greenwich DLR stations, being situated in Greenwich town centre.
Eltham Palace is a large house at Eltham in southeast London, England, within the Royal Borough of Greenwich. The house consists of the medieval great hall of a former royal residence, to which an Art Deco extension was added in the 1930s. The hammerbeam roof of the great hall is the third-largest of its type in England, and the Art Deco interior of the house has been described as a "masterpiece of modern design". The house is owned by the Crown Estate and managed by English Heritage, which took over responsibility for the great hall in 1984 and the rest of the site in 1995.
Eltham is a district of southeast London, England, within the Royal Borough of Greenwich. It is 8.7 miles (14.0 km) east-southeast of Charing Cross, and is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. The three wards of Eltham North, South and West have a total population of 35,459. 88,000 people live in Eltham.
Sir Edward Brantwood Maufe, RA, FRIBA was an English architect and designer. He built private homes as well as commercial and institutional buildings, and is remembered chiefly for his work on places of worship and memorials. Perhaps his best known buildings are Guildford Cathedral and the Air Forces Memorial. He was a recipient of the Royal Gold Medal for architecture in 1944 and, in 1954, received a knighthood for services to the Imperial War Graves Commission, with which he was associated from 1943 until his death.
Solitude Palace is a Rococo schloss and hunting retreat commissioned by Charles Eugene, Duke of Württemberg. It was designed by Johann Friedrich Weyhing and Philippe de La Guêpière, and constructed from 1764 to 1769. It is located on an elongated ridge between the towns of Leonberg, Gerlingen and Stuttgart in Baden-Württemberg.
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Vanbrugh Castle is a house designed and built by John Vanbrugh around 1719 for his own family. It is located on Maze Hill on the eastern edge of Greenwich Park in London, to the north of Blackheath, with views to the west past the Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich down to the Thames reaching as far as the Houses of Parliament.
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