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
Bust of King Charles I (Bernini) no longer exists; it was most likely destroyed in the Palace of Whitehall fire of 1698. Numerous copies of the image exist in other forms (e.g. engravings, bronze sculptures). For a while in 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a belief in England and elsewhere that Bernini had also created a bust of Oliver Cromwell, the victor over Charles I in the English Civil War. However, the attribution was refuted in 1922. Bust of King Charles I (Bernini) The Bust of Charles I was a sculptural bust produced by the Italian artist Gianlorenzo Bernini which according to one historian,