Chiswick House
Chiswick House is located in fashionable South West London. It is the first and one of the finest examples of neo-Palladian design in England. Inspired by the architecture of ancient Rome and 16th Century Italy, the third Earl of Burlington built the house as a homage to Renaissance architect Palladio. Its approach, flanked by herms and a door guarded by statues of architects, is unprecedented in England. The main entrance is a blank passage that opens straight into the main room. On the floor below, an even odder door was copied from those found in the pedestals of the columns of Trajan and Atoninus in Rome. The divided and subdivided interior stair is disproportionately large for so small a country house. To each side of the house, lengths of wall are extended, leading nowhere, attached to nothing else and flanking nothing. Rooms are heated by chimneys in the outside walls; the chimney stacks are obelisk-shaped, common in Venice, unique in England. All these features aimed to shock; and the shock of the new drew the rich and fashionable here in droves. It has a stepped dome based on the Minerva Medica, as does the Pantheon in Rome. The ground floor plan was based on the Lateran Baptistery; its ornament was copied from the Basilica of Maxentius, the Temple of Venus and Rome, the Temple of Mars Ultor, and the Maison Carre at Nimes. The recessed Venetian windows of the rear façade were to have a long history in Palladian building.
The original gardens at Chiswick, which featured a wilderness area were an early example of the English Landscape Movement. Spread across 65 acres, the gardens have inspired many garden landscapes, including that of
- Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire,
- New York's Central Park.
Palladian Timeline
- 1717 - Colen Campbell remodelled the front of Burlington House in Piccadilly for Lord Burlington and provided an entrance gateway (remodelled in 1868 and the gateway demolished) to the property.
- 1730 - Burlington designed a new floor for York Minster in the neo-classical Palladian style. The new marble floor required the destruction of every tomb left in the nave and many in the transepts and choir as well.
- From about 1733 on Chiswick was Burlington's main London residence. He joined the old house, which he had inherited, to the new villa - which is in the Neo-Palladian style.
- 1738 -The Inigo Jones Gateway, acquired by Lord Burlington from his friend Sir Hans Sloane.
- 1813 - The Conservatory, completed, with the oldest collection of camellias outside China and Japan.
