'I palazzi londinesi dello Strand: 1550-1650’

Originating from the author’s book on the Great Houses of the Strand: the Ruling Elite at home in Tudor and Jacobean London (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, forthcoming), this essay provides an overview of the so–called Strand palaces, a highly significant if much neglected chapter of London’s architecture. The Strand palace phenomenon, in which owning a residence close to Westminster became de rigueur after Henry VIII established a permanent court at Whitehall, itself originates from the far older “Bishops’ Inns”, metaphorical power houses of the high clergy strategically built along the Strand in the 13th century. The Strand was the ‘main channel of communication’ between London’s economic heart in the City and its political centre at Westminster, while the Thames furnished the conditions for rapid public transport to all the royal palaces, from Greenwich to Hampton Court. After the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536, the inns passed to the emerging political élite, becoming a satellite court and seat of refined patronage both for art (many of these palaces became ante litteram museums) and architecture, considering the involvement of all the greatest architects of the period, comprising Inigo Jones, celebrated “surveyor” of royal building and a resident of the Strand. Between the 1540s and the 1650s, 11 palaces either replaced or incorporated the old inns, from East to West: Essex House, Arundel House, Somerset House, The Savoy, Burghley–Cecil House, Bedford House, Worcester House, Salisbury House, Durham House, York House and Northampton (later Northumberland) House.