Maritime Greenwich
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How it came to be
Greenwich was once the site of a royal palace, the birthplace of the Tudor monarchs Henry VIII, Mary I and Elizabeth I. In 1616 the architect Inigo Jones began the Queen's House for Anne of Denmark. It was his first major commission after studying architecture in Italy and is regarded as the first consciously classical building in England. Work stopped when Anne fell ill, and the house was completed in 1635.
In 1675 Charles II founded the Royal Observatory, and its foundation stone was laid on 10 August. Christopher Wren chose the hilltop site and designed the building, and John Flamsteed became the first Astronomer Royal. In 1692 Mary II ordered a Royal Hospital for Seamen, and Wren's buildings for it went up between 1696 and 1712, arranged to keep the view from the Queen's House to the river.
The hospital closed in 1869, and from 1873 to 1998 the buildings housed the Royal Naval College. In 1884 the International Meridian Conference voted 22 to 1 to adopt the meridian through the transit instrument at Greenwich as the starting point for longitude. Maritime Greenwich was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1997.
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