Inventing a National Style Majesty and Mortar: Britain's Great Palaces

In the winter of 1647, Carisbrooke Castle,

on the Isle of Wight, became a jail for a very important prisoner...

..King Charles I.

England was still in the shadow of bloody civil war -

Royalists against Parliamentarians.

The future of the monarchy was in doubt.

But in his prison cell at Carisbrooke,

the King was planning his future.

Charles was no ordinary prisoner.

To many, he was still King

and treated with some dignity by his Parliamentarian captors.

He had 30 servants down here at one stage and some of his books

shipped down from his library,

among them, a book that had inspired a new royal palace,

the biggest palace Britain had ever seen.

Charles wanted architecture to assert and sustain the power of monarchy.

Palaces should be built on a monumental scale.

They must live up to the Classical glories of ancient Rome

and emulate divine architecture described in the Old Testament.

For nearly three centuries,

Classicism would dominate palace-building in Britain.

Here were precisely proportioned and symmetrical buildings

that banished the confusion of medieval and Tudor times.

It helped establish a national style that would continue until today.

Architecture had never been so important to monarchy.

It's a story of palatial ambition.

Palaces achieved, palaces abandoned,

palaces killed off.

The Tudor line ended when Queen Elizabeth died

on the 24th March, 1603.

It had been a painful end as she struggled to resist death.

The Tudor dynasty was over and a new one, the Stuarts, beckoned.

The heir was James, King of Scotland,

a Protestant monarch like his cousin Elizabeth.

Now he had a new kingdom to enjoy.

Much of London was a rambling mix of timber and plaster buildings,

packed into narrow streets.

The new King proclaimed he would rebuild the city

like Augustus in Ancient Rome.

Now London would be made of brick,

"More durable, safe from fire and beautiful and magnificent."

On the 15th March, 1604, Londoners flooded onto the streets

to celebrate the coronation of James I.

James travelled the ancient route of kingship,

from the Tower of London, to my right, to Westminster

and on the way, passed through seven triumphal arches...

the first of which stood just about here, on Fenchurch Street.

On top of the first arch was a familiar image of Tudor London,

old St Paul's surrounded by tightly packed houses and streets.

But the rest of the arch was something new,

an essay in Classical proportion and symmetry.

This one, in front of me now,

I imagine rose 50ft high

and was draped with giant curtains painted with clouds.

When the King approached, the curtains parted to reveal the arch.

The effect, one observer noted at the time,

was like the rising of the sun, with all mist dispersed and fled.

All seven arches, even though temporary structures

of wood and plaster, pointed to a new future.

King James was choosing a heroic brand of architecture

and he would use it to define a new kind of monarchy.

As James passed under each arch, the message was clear.

Here was a modern-day Caesar.

For one day, at least, James' new capital London became ancient Rome.

Now James wanted to make his vision permanent.

But he would need help to make it happen.

Inigo Jones, born in London, the son of a Welsh clothworker,

was a set and costume designer.

But on a visit to Italy in the late 1590s,

Jones was profoundly impressed by Renaissance Classicism...

in particular, the work of Andrea Palladio.

This is Jones' annotated copy of Palladio's book,

showing the rudiments of classical architecture,

the reconstruction of inspirational Roman buildings,

with rows of columns, symmetry and geometry

based on the square, the cube, the sphere.

In the heart of Whitehall in January 1619,

the Banqueting House of the old Palace of Whitehall burned down.

Now Jones would design a new building,

bringing Renaissance Classicism into the heart of London.

Today, neighbouring buildings compete for attention...

..and Jones' Banqueting House is easy to miss.

But in its day, it was a revolution in stone.

When new, this stone-faced building would have been

an extraordinary sight for Londoners, alien in design,

towering above the older brick and timber built structures,

as if from another world.

There are tiers of columns and pilasters,

there are swags between the pilasters up there.

This architecture expresses unity, harmony,

the authority of the monarchy.

Those are just the qualities that James wanted his reign to express.

Oh. Goodness, it's wonderful.

Well, the first thing to observe is that the inside

is rather like the outside,

an interior world within the greater world.

As with the outside, there are tiers of columns and pilasters

and swags up there with masks and...

Well, it's a magnificent antique space from the ancient world...

..daunting, in a way, overwhelming.

The Banqueting House was completed in 1622.

Classicism was now established as the backdrop to royal authority.

But it was only the beginning.

James died in 1625.

It would be his son, Charles, who took the union of monarchy,

power and architecture to new heights.

First, he would transform the Banqueting House

into a shrine to his dead father.

Charles would create a ceiling like no other in Britain.

And Rubens, the greatest artist alive, would paint it.

The ceiling is an incredible statement,

in its content and artistically.

There are, in this ceiling, three versions of James I.

The first, above my head, shows James sitting in judgment,

uniting the crowns of England and Scotland

and there we see the crown being held by Minerva,

the goddess of wisdom, above the head of a naked babe...

the future Charles I.

At the far end of the hall, above the throne,

is the personification of James as a bringer of peace and prosperity.

Here he sits between curving columns,

pointing down to Peace embracing Abundance.

In the centre of the hall, on the largest panel,

you see the apotheosis of James I,

the divinely appointed monarch

being carried in triumph to Heaven, raised aloft by Justice.

Together, three images of James I, really a holy trinity...

all of this proclaiming the virtues of divine monarchy,

the virtues of the Stuart dynasty.

Charles's ceiling was a piece of breathtaking arrogance,

almost blasphemous.

It proclaimed the divinity of the Stuart dynasty.

But Charles and his architect, Inigo Jones, had even bigger plans.

The Banqueting House would inspire a new Palace of Whitehall.

The muddle of Tudor buildings that made up the old palace

would be demolished.

The scale of the new building was vast.

It would stretch nearly 900ft along the banks of the Thames

and back well over 1,000ft into St James's Park.

Its river frontage boasted tiers of arches

and was topped by balustraded entablatures, rows of columns

and scores of heroic figures from antiquity.

It would be the largest palace Britain had ever seen.

Above all, it would be a building to proclaim the divine right of kings.

The secret of how to do this lay in a book in Charles' own library.

It had been written by a Spanish mathematician and Jesuit

named Juan Bautista Villalpando.

Villalpando believed that God had delivered a set

of architectural rules to mankind... rules, in their way, as momentous

as the Ten Commandments handed down to Moses.

Passages from the Old Testament describe how God created

the rules of Classical architecture to build the most sacred temple

in the world, the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem,

built to house the Ark of the Covenant.

Here is the plan of Solomon's Temple as reconstructed by Villalpando.

It's a wonderful book, full of sensational illustrations.

Amazing to think of Charles brooding over this plan.

These drawings are what he would have regarded as

the world's first sacred building, the great prototype

for all that's beautiful in architecture.

Here is the plan of Solomon's Temple.

It has a grid of nine squares creating a series of courtyards

and here is the 1638 design for Whitehall Palace.

What's striking, of course, is the similarity.

Both designs essentially square and Whitehall, like Villalpando's,

is organised around a grid of nine squares.

And here's one of the outer elevations of Solomon's Temple.

There are towers here marking entrances, tiers of columns

and pilasters and swags, drapes of foliage...

just like the design for Whitehall palace.

The inspiration is clearly Villalpando's reconstruction

of Solomon's temple.

They are strikingly similar.

But Charles was running out of time.

Political and religious opposition

to his absolutist - even tyrannical - rule was mounting

and in 1642, England erupted into civil war.

Parliamentarians against Royalists,

one town against another,

families split down the middle.

Edgehill, Marston Moor, Naseby...

battles raged throughout the country.

The King was captured in January 1647.

He ended up at Carisbrooke Castle.

And it was here, even when all seemed lost,

that Charles gave the go-ahead to the new royal palace.

John Webb, Inigo Jones' assistant,

visited him at Carisbrooke with the latest plans.

This is a revised and final design for Whitehall Palace.

Charles looked at it and he or Webb wrote upon it the word,

"taken".

This design was commissioned. But what on earth was Charles thinking?

At the 11th hour, did he really believe

he could snatch victory from defeat?

That he could, at some point, regain the throne

and inhabit such a vast palace?

Was he trying to intimidate his jailers with this almost

monstrous display of self-confidence,

or was he simply, sadly deluded?

On New Year's Day, 1649,

Parliament voted to try King Charles for treason.

The outcome was a foregone conclusion.

Charles was found guilty as "tyrant, traitor, murderer

"and public enemy to the good people of this nation."

The sentence was "death by severing the head from his body."

This was uncharted territory,

an incredible turn of events.

Traitors were usually enemies of the King,

but now the King had been declared a traitor to the nation.

Parliament had turned the old world upside down.

And the place chosen for execution was perhaps the final insult.

Charles was to be treated as a criminal,

with Whitehall Palace the scene of his crimes.

So he would be executed on a scaffold in front of the very place

that embodied the Stuart monarchy...

the Banqueting House.

As Charles passed through the building, he must have looked up

at the Rubens ceiling to see his father ascending into Heaven.

What Charles saw next must have chilled him to the bones.

There was, on the scaffold, a set of chains to restrain him

in case he struggled and a cheap black coffin to receive his body.

Charles had wanted to address his last words to the public

but the vast crowds of people out there on rooftops,

leaning from upper windows, was kept well back by ranks of soldiers.

The Banqueting House had been modified for his execution.

A window had been removed, so he could step out onto

the specially erected scaffold, draped in black.

"I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown,"

he said, "Where no disturbances can be..."

Charles knelt down on the scaffold, just a metre or so above my head.

The restraining chains were, of course, not needed.

He said to the executioner,

"When I put my hands this way...

"then!"

Charles lay down with his head on the block.

He murmured a few words to himself,

a private prayer, of course, and then put out his arms, thus.

And with one blow, all was over.

LOUD THUD

Architecture to glorify the monarchy

had ended up as a backdrop to royal catastrophe.

The years of the Commonwealth saw many royal palaces fall into ruin.

Squatters moved into Windsor Castle.

Oliver Cromwell famously occupied the Palace of Whitehall,

but even it was put up for sale after his death in 1658.

Many saw buildings in the Palladian style of Inigo Jones

as painful reminders of royal power and arrogance.

Jones' Somerset House was ransacked,

and the Classical portico which he had added to old St Paul's

was vandalised.

Jones himself was imprisoned by the new regime

and fined £1,000 for being a delinquent.

He died in 1652, unaware that a royal palace

would ever be built again.

On the 29th May, 1660, the unthinkable happened.

The heir of the executed King returned

to restore the fortunes of the Stuart dynasty.

And the new King Charles shared the architectural ambitions

of his father...and more!

Charles II arrived in London from exile in Europe

in triumphant style.

And Charles brought with him

a taste for the new French style of Classicism.

The Baroque was about to reach new heights -

the building of the great Palace of Versailles for Louis XIV.

Its grandeur and scale would be the envy of British monarchs

for decades to come.

But here in Britain, the world had changed.

From now on, the monarchy

and its finances would be under the control of Parliament.

Claims to rule by divine right were well and truly over.

But it remained to be seen how the ambition of royal architecture

could deal with the reality of reduced royal power.

At Windsor Castle, Charles managed to build a miniature palace

within a palace.

Behind medieval castle walls,

he created a set of Baroque apartments...

..an opulent royal interior, discreetly hidden from public view.

Only three of the original 15 rooms survive but the decorations

give a hint of what Charles would have done on a grander scale.

It was a way of enjoying the flavour of a Baroque palace

while still enjoying a defendable position.

It was as far as Charles dared go,

given the events of just a few years earlier.

Charles would complete only one palace, at Winchester,

close enough to the coast for a speedy escape

if things turned anti-royal again.

Winchester was later abandoned, converted into barracks

and gutted by fire in the late 19th century.

But Charles succeeded in setting the style for royal architecture.

In 1669, he'd appointed Christopher Wren

as Surveyor of the King's Works.

Wren had first come to prominence after the Great Fire of London

with a plan for rebuilding the whole city.

He proposed abandoning the old medieval layout

and replacing it with a harmonious grid of streets,

intersected by wide, straight, diagonal avenues.

Alas, the King did not have the money or power to force through

a radical plan and the city was rapidly rebuilt

on its cramped medieval plan.

But the choice of Wren as Royal Architect would resonate

long beyond Charles' death in 1685.

After a brief and disastrous reign by Charles II's brother,

James, Parliament asserted its opposition to the King

and James fled abroad into exile.

Now events offered Wren a new royal patron.

Parliament invited James' Protestant daughter, Mary,

and her husband, William, to become joint monarchs.

It was called The Glorious Revolution

for its empowerment of Parliament,

but it would also pave the way

for the most ambitious royal building for years.

William and Mary were a most odd couple.

He was a wheezing asthmatic, stunted, with blackened teeth

and a hooked nose.

She was attractive, 12 years his junior and half a foot taller.

The marriage got off to a bad start. She was a reluctant bride

and cried through much of the marriage ceremony.

So you have Mary, emotional, passionate, good-looking,

and William, chilly, dour and grim of visage,

But the alliance grew into that most unlikely of things,

a politically-arranged marriage that blossomed into true love.

The blend of the cautious and pragmatic William

with his exuberant, art-loving wife, Mary, was a magic combination.

It meant for the first time since James I,

royal building work wasn't going to set alarm bells ringing.

Parliament trusted and needed William, so Mary could get on

with what she liked most, the art of building.

She also had the alibi of being a caring wife.

Newly arrived from Holland,

asthmatic William was soon enfeebled by the London damp.

Ten days after arriving in England

and after seeing her haggard husband,

Mary moved William and the royal household

down here to Hampton Court.

It was in the countryside, by the river,

away from the smokes and smogs of the City.

But changes had to be made to the old Tudor building, so two days

after arriving, the Royal couple summoned Sir Christopher Wren down to look at the palace

and come up with ideas for additions and alterations.

Wren's plan was radical.

He would demolish the Tudor Palace and rebuild from scratch.

Only the Great Hall would be spared.

But the plan was much too expensive.

The Queen took charge.

Mary had a great enthusiasm for architecture.

She and Wren poured over drawings for Hampton Court.

He called her judgment exquisite.

Together, they came up with an ambitious plan.

Wren would add a new building, but attached to the old Tudor palace.

A sense of economy prevailed,

even though the new building would contain over 250 rooms.

In style, too, the new Palace would tread a political knife-edge.

For sheer bravado, it needed to rival the best palaces in Europe,

while avoiding the impression the old Stuart arrogance was back.

So in their architecture,

William and Mary wanted to challenge Louis XIV, the Sun King.

But their lack of money and perhaps fear of appearing too ostentatious

in the eyes of their new subjects,

gives their palace a very special quality...

a quality of muted grandeur.

And, of course, Christopher Wren, with typical brilliance,

turned economic constraints to artistic advantage by using

cheaper red brick but laced with white stone.

It gives this a great architectural distinction.

And rather than being intimidating, say, like Versailles,

this palace is comfortable, it is sedate, it has a sense of welcome.

Even so, the palace borrows directly from France's architecture

of royal etiquette and flamboyance.

This is the King's Staircase, the start of the King's Apartment.

The theme here, in the decoration, is the glorification of William.

We see him here in three guises.

Above me, he is Apollo, presiding over the muses of Peace,

Plenty and Prosperity.

And up here, as Alexander the Great,

with winged Victory over his shoulder.

So, military triumphalism.

And here, as Emperor Julian ridding the world of Roman Catholicism.

And above all preside the gods in banquet,

looking down and approving the world, the works of William.

But however brilliant the decoration, the most exciting

feature here is the arrangement of the King's State Apartment.

The first room is the Guard Chamber, where guards were stationed

to keep out idle, mean and unknown persons.

Then from here on in, each room becomes more exclusive,

allowing access to the King to fewer and fewer people,

an architectural statement in status and privilege.

And an enfilade adds drama to the space.

It's the name given to a set of aligned doorways

forming a perfect vista through a succession of rooms.

Such a virtual corridor ensured a theatrical feel to the whole thing.

This is the King's Presence Chamber,

a place of formal reception where the King would have sat

beneath this canopy of state.

Now things get a little bit more privileged,

with many visitors being filtered out at this door.

The King's Eating Room was, as the King described it himself,

"Open to persons of good fashion and good appearance

"that have a desire to see us at dinner."

Next came the King's Privy Chamber...

..where nobility and privy councillors were permitted.

Now this is very interesting.

Only very special people would have been allowed in here,

the Withdrawing Chamber.

They'd have come in to chat to the King, so therefore very sort of

privileged access, or even play cards with him in front of the fire.

So more relaxed but nevertheless,

the King still has a sort of throne on this dais, sitting there

and contemplating the portrait of his grandfather, Charles I.

This is the Great Bedchamber, the start of the inner world

of the King's apartment, ruled over by a very powerful courtier

called the Groom of the Stool.

And here we have this absolutely sensational bed,

but not for sleeping in, it was a great status symbol, really,

a symbol power. Also, it was the focus of a strange bit of theatre

that William had imported from the court of his great rival

Louis XIV, because when William was in residence here,

he would get dressed and undressed in public.

The King would be here, the courtiers over there,

he would be putting on his shirt, his waistcoat, chatting to them,

I suppose, as this event took place.

William, knowing his character, poor fellow, must have hated it.

Slightly embarrassing.

Next, the King's Little Bedchamber.

Designed to be the King's real bedroom,

few courtiers would have made it here.

On the ceiling is Mars, the god of war, perhaps depicting William

being disarmed by Mary, in the guise of Venus.

The finale, curiously, is one of the smallest rooms in the palace.

This is the King's Closet.

This small room was the ultimate goal of all ambitious courtiers.

Only the most privileged would be allowed in here

for a private interview with the King.

There's something very ingenious about this room.

William, standing here, would have had a view, via this angled mirror,

of the entire length of the enfilade,

seeing who was coming into his presence.

But Hampton Court was 13 miles,

and a couple of hours hard ride, from central London.

Increasingly, William and Mary were under pressure to move back to town.

But Mary was not moving to London

unless she could have a palace well away from the river.

She chose Nottingham House in the quiet village of Kensington.

Sir Christopher Wren was given the job of turning

Nottingham House into a royal home.

If Hampton Court had been something of a compromise,

this project promised to be even more so.

Due to constraints over time and money, Wren suggested initially

keeping the Jacobean house

and having four corner pavilions around it.

Once again, brick was the chosen material, cheaper than stone.

Mary drove the project and she was a very tough taskmaster.

Everyday, she urged Wren and the builders to finish quickly,

so the royal couple could move in.

One day, a wall collapsed, killing several men.

"I was too impatient," Mary said, blaming herself for the tragedy.

For a palace, Kensington is very modest.

It's about as close as a royal couple could get to building

themselves a domestic semi-suburban villa.

The only external grandeur are these three windows in front of me,

with that parapet up there and those urns

and some curious carved keystones down below.

This simplicity could simply be William and Mary

being politically astute, not wanting to build a mighty palace

to frighten their new subjects...

but more likely it represents

the sort of home they wanted to live in as a happily married couple.

But the palace interior is far from modest.

The King's Staircase was originally wooden

but work began on a new stone staircase in 1695.

The walls of the staircase, like much of the palace interior,

would be decorated by later monarchs.

But they continued the Roman and Italian Renaissance themes

the Stuarts had introduced...

..and nowhere more so than the climactic Cupola Room.

This is the most striking room in the palace - the Cupola Room.

It's splendid.

The ceiling is inspired by the great emblematic Roman building,

the Pantheon... wonderfully theatrical.

It has the architectural authority,

the ancient pedigree of the interiors created by Inigo Jones

for James I and Charles I, almost 100 years earlier.

This really is the recognised, accepted architectural language

of British monarchy.

But the architectural ambitions of royalty

were about to spill beyond palace walls.

In 1692, Sir Christopher Wren completed the Royal Hospital

at Chelsea, a home for old soldiers.

Situated two miles south of Kensington,

Chelsea was as monumental as any royal palace.

Now Wren planned the construction of a two mile avenue

to connect Chelsea with Kensington Palace.

The remains of this scheme survive.

What was Wren up to? His ambition was amazing.

He must surely have collaborated with William and Mary

over the acquisition of the site for Kensington Palace

and, with them, sought to create in the fields of west London

an approximation of the Baroque gardens of Versailles

or indeed, to realise aspects of the Renaissance plan for Rome.

I suppose for Wren, this was an opportunity at last to realise

his vision for rebuilding the city of London.

Alas, Wren's plans ended here.

All that remains is this short length of gravel pathway...

and the question of what might have been.

Back at Kensington Palace, things were about to unravel.

Queen Mary, architectural and artistic spirit

of the Stuart dynasty and royal muse for Wren, was ailing.

This was Mary's bedchamber.

On the 20th December, 1694,

she woke up here with a headache, back pains and a slight fever.

She had smallpox.

William, of course, was distraught.

He knew just how deadly the disease was...

It had killed his mother and his father.

He wrote to a cousin,

"You can believe the condition I am in, loving her as I do.

"If I lose her, I shall be done with the world."

As Mary's health declined,

she was moved into this small closet, adjoining her bedchamber.

It would have been a very private room and when in health,

it played an important role in Mary's life in the palace.

This is where she would have written letters, read books, I suppose,

received intimate friends...

And it's now, as you can see, a rather clinical office.

Strange.

But around Christmas, 1694,

it was this room, this small room,

in which Mary died.

Seven years later, William died and Mary's sister,

Anne, last of the Stuart monarchs, died childless.

Wren would go on to complete his greatest work,

his immense Baroque cathedral of St Paul's.

He would even live to see it finished,

dying at the grand old age of 91.

But the Stuart monarchy,

the most architecturally obsessed royal dynasty Britain had ever seen,

was over.

And for a while, it looked like the grand vision

for royal building had died with them.

Parliament settled on a distant branch of the family

to take over the throne...

German princes of Hanover, with solid Protestant credentials.

While other European monarchs built with Baroque extravagance,

in Britain, no great royal palaces would be built to reflect

the nation's growing Imperial ambitions.

Kew Palace is one of the most modest buildings

ever to rejoice in the title of palace.

Built in 1631 as a merchant's villa,

it was acquired by the new royals in 1728.

It was a perfect country retreat, but also close enough to London.

Kew would become a favoured residence of George III

and his growing family.

It seemed to usher in a new era.

George was like a breath of fresh air when he came to the throne in 1760.

He was only 22 years old.

He got married almost immediately. It must have been a love-match

because he and his queen started having children

at a rate of one a year - for the next 15 years!

As soon as you step in here, it feels, well, not like a palace,

but like a family home.

For George, this house must have been full of memories.

As a child, this is where he'd received part of his schooling.

So it was natural for him to arrange for his children

to be brought up here.

This was their nursery, this is where they received

their early lessons, where they played...

and they were, by all accounts, a rowdy bunch.

One governess took to drink

and a governor resigned in despair.

George disliked Hampton Court and Kensington Palace.

Kew is probably where he felt most at home.

Even today, it has a feel of modest domesticity.

And it brought the royal family

closer to the people than ever before.

It seems incredible, but in the late 18th century,

that path, the one right down there, was a public road.

There were gates and railings to give the royal family some privacy

and security, but it does show just how close George's subjects

could get to their monarch.

And in the early days of George's reign, he welcomed them in.

There are accounts of the King and Queen sitting at windows

and talking to friends and you can imagine George, on occasion,

chatting to his subjects on the road there - it's quite possible.

And of course the royal children playing in the gardens.

On one occasion, a royal gardener approached the King and complained

about the public trampling the flowers and tearing up the shrubs.

The King, somewhat annoyed, simply snapped back,

"Well, plant some more, then."

But George's eccentricity would escalate into insanity.

There would be times of mania

when he had to be hidden from public view.

These were dark days for royalty.

Unfortunately for George, his mania would push him

into an act of gothic madness, right on the doorstep at Kew.

In 1802, work started on the Castellated Palace.

Radicals nicknamed it The Bastille,

a gleeful reference to the regicidal days of the French Revolution.

The new palace was denounced as a monument to madness,

its neo-medieval style the product of a distempered reason.

It's amazing to think that the vast new royal palace

stood just about here.

The sheer ambition of this grandiose project

reveals George's soaring optimism...

or indeed, his mania.

He must have believed he'd weathered the mental storm

and he wanted to repossess Kew, the home of a happy childhood.

But this was the calm before the storm.

Ten years later, the dream came crashing down.

In 1811, a regency was proclaimed

because the King's madness had finally taken hold.

The Prince Regent, another George, was now monarch in all but name.

Here was a royal who wanted to return

to the architectural glory days of the Stuarts.

This George was generally regarded as a flamboyant rake,

but was also a leader of taste and fashion, with a passion for

palatial architecture, a passion that was to find expression

in a most dramatic manner, on farmland here in Marylebone.

In 1811, this was agricultural land and due to revert to the crown.

Now George would take palatial architecture to the people...

albeit mostly rich and well-connected people.

John Nash had begun his career as a speculative builder

and it was his plan that caught George's imagination.

The farmland would be transformed into a picturesque landscape,

Regent's Park.

It would be the setting for an extraordinary

new architectural vision.

This is Cumberland Terrace. It's formed by individual houses,

designed to look like a single palatial composition.

Nash argued that the Regent's Park development

should have the look of grand town houses set in the country

rather than country houses marooned in the town.

These are domestic palaces,

hopefully for aristocratic occupation.

The Classical frontage of Cumberland Terrace

hid 27 separate houses across three blocks

linked by triumphal arches.

The central pediment shows Britannia in imperial pose,

presiding over the arts, sciences and trades.

But Nash's development didn't just consist of houses.

It was part of an audacious new street plan

that would change the face of London and inspire picturesque town-planning

beyond the capital.

The streets of London would be raised to palatial heights.

It involved the creation of a new road that would have taken

the residents around Regent's Park,

straight to the heart of royal power,

to the palace of the Prince Regent himself.

The new road, inevitably called Regent Street,

was to be filled with fashionable shops and houses.

It swept down to Piccadilly, where the Circus was created,

before arriving at George's own front door at Carlton House.

But Nash's great processional route didn't end at Carlton House,

which stood about here, but continued west along the Mall

and terminated in front of another royal residence,

then known as Buckingham House.

Nash, in partnership with the regent, now George IV,

would transform Buckingham House into the most famous Palace in the world.

The wings of the house would be demolished,

rebuilt and brought forward to form an open courtyard.

The main block was to be kept but extended,

with the brick exterior covered in Bath stone.

George IV's improvements here started here in relatively

modest manner - it is, after all, revealing that he initially

referred to the palace as his "pied-a-terre".

But as King, and with Nash in charge, he undertook the construction

of one of the largest royal palaces the country had ever seen.

George and Nash's plans grew ever more ambitious.

Initial costs were met by public funds,

but when George needed more, Parliament resisted.

So he pulled down his father's Castellated Palace at Kew and his

own Carlton House to salvage stone and recycle fixtures and fittings.

But costs still spiralled

and by 1829, they had reached £500,000.

It was almost undignified.

Parliament pointed an accusing finger at Nash.

It was, of course, also a way of getting at George.

Nash was hauled before furious parliamentary committees

demanding to know where the money had gone.

Nash pointed out that he was simply an obedient servant,

obeying royal orders, but despite all of this,

Nash did achieve something quite remarkable.

Here was a building that harked back to ancient Rome,

to the Classicism beloved by Inigo Jones

and the vision of Juan Battista Villalpando.

Today, Nash's triumphal assertion of monarchy survives intact,

forming three sides of Buckingham Palace's inner courtyard.

It may feel unfamiliar today,

but that's because a later frontage has been added,

enclosing the courtyard and hiding the Nash building from public view.

George died in 1830, leaving an architectural legacy

that was to provide the backdrop for modern monarchy.

At the time, though, it looked like the expense of his building work

had fatally discredited the monarchy.

Nash was sacked by Parliament in 1831,

accused of financial irregularities and negligence.

He died in 1835...

out of work and in debt.

For over two centuries, British kings and queens,

with their favourite architects,

embraced the Classical language of architecture as a means of expressing

the power, the aspirations and the changing fortunes of monarchy.

It had been an extraordinary journey.

The two most architecturally ambitious British monarchs

since the Middle Ages were Charles I and George IV.

But they were also amongst the least loved.

Perhaps the price of achieving great royal architecture

was to be reviled for being profligate and arrogant.

But William and Mary achieved great things

without losing the support of the nation.

Now the monarchs of the modern age would need to use

all their political adeptness to keep the palace show on the road.

Next time...

..opening the palaces to the people...

..the grandest royal statement of them all...

..British palaces under fire...

..and the fight to keep the palaces standing.