The Queen’s House
Greenwich London SE10 9NF
Designed by Inigo Jones in 1638, the Queen's House takes centre stage in Greenwich's symmetrical complex of royal and naval buildings, the meat in the sandwich between the two wings of the Maritime Museum. It claims with some justification to be the first classical building in Britain, inspired by the elegant Renaissance buildings of Italy, and although not much of the original decor survives (Gentileschi's ceiling frescoes ended up in Marlborough House in central London) the cuboid Great Hall is undeniably impressive, as are the so-called Tulip Stairs which wind up from one corner and were the first spiral stair ever seen in the UK. What most people want to know about, however, is the Queen's House Ghost – a shrouded figure on the stairs captured inadvertently by a Canadian visitor in 1966. The figure's presence in the photos has never been properly explained, and indeed only a decade ago a museum attendant witnessed a similar apparition.