Marble Hill House, Richmond Upon Thames, Greater London
"The Great Room Marble Hill House. The house is a Georgian Palladian villa built between 1724 and 1729 to the designs of Lord Herbert and Roger Morris for Henrietta Howard, mistress of George II. It was intended as an Arcadian retreat from crowded 18th-century London. The Great Room has lavish gilded decoration and architectural paintings by Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691-1765). The house also contains an important collection of early Georgian furniture. The original contents, dispersed in 1824, have been re-assembled from as far afield as Philadelphia and Melbourne, Australia. The building had been altered externally and internally but was restored to its original design by the Greater London Council between 1965 and 1966. It is now (2011) in the care of English Heritage. "
