Banqueting House, Whitehall Banqueting House, Whitehall The Banqueting House, Whitehall, is the grandest and best known survivor of the architectural genre of banqueting house and the only remaining component of the Palace of Whitehall. The building is important in the history of English architecture as the first structure to be completed in the neo-classical style, which was to transform English architecture. Begun in 1619 and designed by Inigo Jones in a style influenced by Andrea Palladio, the Banqueting House was completed in 1622 at a cost of £15,618, 27 years before King Charles I of England was beheaded on a scaffold in front
Banqueting House, Whitehall since been demolished and instead marks the site of a footpath junction of the London Loop. This house was used to entertain the French agent in London and ambassador Gilles de Noailles and his wife in 1556. The first permanent banqueting house at Whitehall had a short life. It was built for King James I, but was destroyed by fire in January 1619, when workmen, clearing up after New Year's festivities, decided to incinerate the rubbish inside the building. An immediate replacement was commissioned from the fashionable architect Inigo Jones. Jones had spent time in Italy studying the architecture evolving