As one of the principal surviving works of Inigo Jones, the elegant simplicity of the Queen's House, exaggerated by the compactness of the building, is a wonderful example of English palladianism, and deemed to be a most important building in terms of British architectural history. Now forming part of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, this refined early 17th century building faces the park on one side and looks out to the River Thames on the other.

Greenwich had been long recognised for its strategic location on the main land and river routes to London, and had been a Royal manor since the 14th century. When Queen Anne of Denmark came to the old palace, once occupied by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, she commissioned Inigo Jones to build her a comfortable retreat to complement the Italianate gardens of the palace that gave her so much pleasure. Unfortunately, by the time of her death in 1619, the house had only reached the first storey, and building did not restart for a further 10 years, being completed for Queen Henrietta Maria, wife to Charles I. During the Civil War Queen's House was seized by the Parliamentarians, who sold the paintings collected by Charles I. Although reinstated after the Civil War, and remaining a Crown property, the Royals had virtually abandoned this splendid house by the beginning of the 18th century, when Sir Christopher Wren designed the Naval Hospital with the Queen's House forming its centrepiece.

Based on a large villa he had seen outside Florence, Jones' design for this royal retreat began as an H-shaped building spanning the main road. Eventually extended to form the rectangular arrangement seen today, this remarkable Renaissance building is deceptively plain and simple. Appearing low, flat and relatively unadorned in comparison to many other richly embellished mansions of earlier periods, the Queen's House incorporated several areas of balustrading, pedimented windows, classical columns and other decorative details in a way so subtle that they went almost unnoticed. Few structural alterations have taken place, apart from the long colonnades either side of the house that were added in the 19th century when the Royal Naval School took over the building. By 1934 the Queen's House had been absorbed by the National Maritime Museum.

Restoration work was carried out on three separate occasions during the 20th century, but today the building is used to house long-running exhibitions and very little can be seen of the original room arrangements. Some of the ceilings and plasterwork friezes are visible, the innovative 17th century 'tulip' spiral staircase remains in situ, and the loggia, now quite bare, have all remained much as they were originally planned. What was once the huge entrance hall, a perfect 40ft (12.1m) cube, still displays the ornate wooden balcony, made by the shipwrights at Deptford as their personal contribution to the Royal household.

Even with a substantial part of the Queen's House masked by display boards for the exhibition, there is just enough to give the visitor a taste of the palatial splendour that once existed in the Queen's House. As a single element on this site of outstanding classical buildings the house is graceful yet imposing, but taking in the whole picture from a high vantage point outside the Royal Observatory, it is a stunning scene.