Former Whitehall Palace Steps
Former Whitehall Palace Steps stand in the City of Westminster beside the Thames, marking a surviving connection between royal rooms and river traffic. Repaired stone steps rise beside a reconstructed terrace and river wall.
In 1691, Sir Christopher Wren designed the terrace for Queen Mary II against Whitehall Palace’s Tudor river wall. It projected about seventy feet into the Thames and stretched roughly two hundred eighty feet along the bank. Curving flights led from royal apartments to the state barge, while public stairs served Londoners and visiting ambassadors. Samuel Pepys mentioned the stairs as meeting points and departure places, showing their role in seventeenth-century London life. The riverside access survived the Great Fire of London before Victorian Embankment construction removed the original stairs in the late 1860s.
Excavations in 1939 uncovered the northern flight, Wren’s terrace wall, and the Tudor river wall. A rebuilt river wall rises behind the terrace, framing the surviving upper steps.
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- City of Westminster
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