★★★★★ 5.0
Discover
Somerset House
That imposing gateway before you rises from the blood of a traitor... Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1552, never seeing his Renaissance dream completed. This was England's FIRST taste of Italian architecture, those elegant Doric and Ionic pillars you see echoing through the Strand facade breaking centuries of Gothic tradition in a kingdom hungry for continental sophistication. As you pass through these very stones, you're walking where young Princess Elizabeth once paced as an unwanted royal sister, making Somerset House her first palace. But the real drama unfolded when Anna of Denmark seized this residence in 1603, transforming it into the most controversial building in Britain... for nearly ninety years, every Queen of England called these chambers home, and most were Catholic in a fiercely Protestant nation. Look closely at that elegant courtyard ahead - beneath Sir William Chambers' neoclassical masterpiece from 1776 lie the foundations of Anna's extraordinary waterworks, where fountains once danced and secret grottos whispered of forbidden faiths. The Danish Queen spent four years creating what historians call the most ambitious architectural project of James I's entire reign. Today, as you step inside toward the Courtauld Gallery, you'll discover Van Gogh's haunting self-portrait with that famous bandaged ear... housed in walls that once echoed with the prayers and secrets of England's most powerful women, who ruled from shadows while their husbands wore the crown.
Did You Know?
- Somerset House was once so close to the River Thames that boats could sail directly into its courtyard through the Great Arch—a feature lost when the Victoria Embankment was built in the 1860s, but the basement still houses a historic royal barge, a hidden relic of its riverside past.
- During the 17th century, Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, secretly had a Roman Catholic chapel built inside the palace (now the Courtauld Gallery), and arranged for discreet Catholic burials of her staff beneath the main courtyard—a rare and risky act in Protestant England.
- Somerset House has doubled as famous locations in blockbuster films, standing in for Buckingham Palace in 'King Ralph' (1991), St. Petersburg Square in 'GoldenEye' (1995), and a New York street in 'Sleepy Hollow' (1999)—making it a star of the silver screen as well as a London landmark.