Hampton Court Palace

Hampton Court Palace sits on the River Thames southwest of London, originally begun in 1515 by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Henry VIII's powerful chief minister, who built it as a grand residence to reflect his own status before presenting it to the king in 1529 in an unsuccessful attempt to regain royal favor. Henry VIII then expanded the palace considerably, adding its Great Hall and vast kitchens capable of feeding a royal court of hundreds, and it remained a principal royal residence for more than a century afterward. In the 1690s King William III and Queen Mary II commissioned the architect Christopher Wren to rebuild much of the palace in the fashionable Baroque style, but the project was only partly completed, leaving the palace today as a rare architectural hybrid combining Tudor brick courtyards with Wren's classical Baroque wings. Its grounds include a famous trapezoid hedge maze planted in the 1690s, still open to visitors and one of the oldest surviving hedge mazes in the world.