The Royal Naval College was formerly the Greenwich Hospital for naval pensioners, on the lines of the Chelsea Hospital for army veterans. A listed building,
it was the work of Sir Christopher Wren, Nicholas Hawksmoor (as Wren's
assistant), Sir John Vanbrugh (successor to Wren) and others , and was built 1694-1742, with later additions.
It is on the site of Greenwich Palace, where Henry VIII, Queen Mary,
and Elizabeth I were all born, in Greenwich. Although it
now houses the University of Greenwich and Trinity College of Music
The Painted Hall is the great work of Sir James Thornhill (1675/6-1734):
"Thornhill worked here for nearly twenty years, receiving £3 a yard for
the ceiling and £1 a yard for the walls; but he has left us a legacy
not easily reckoned in pounds" (Mee 844). Designed by another pioneer
of neo-classicism, James "Athenian" Stuart (1713-1788), the chapel was
completed in 1779 after Wren's original chapel was destroyed by fire.
Dedicated to St Peter and St Paul, it has splendid painted and
sculptural work by Benjamin West (1738-1820), most notably his
celebrated painting behind the altar, of St Paul miraculously surviving a
viper's bite when he was shipwrecked on Malta.
The interior of the chapel, in Queen Mary's Building
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