In 1529, as Wolsey fell from favour, the cardinal gave the palace to the king to try to save his own life, which he knew was now in grave danger due to Henry VIII's deepening frustration and anger.

While the palace's styles are an accident of fate, a unity exists due to the use of pink bricks and a symmetrical, if vague, balancing of successive low wings.

Apart from the palace itself and its gardens, other points of interest for visitors include the celebrated maze, the historic royal tennis court (see below), and a huge grape vine, the world's largest as of 2005[update].

[8] Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of York, chief minister to and a favourite of Henry VIII, took over the site of Hampton Court Palace in 1514.

The historian Jonathan Foyle has suggested[14] that it is likely that Wolsey had been inspired by Paolo Cortese's De Cardinalatu, a manual for cardinals that included advice on palatial architecture, published in 1510.

The architectural historian Sir John Summerson asserts that the palace shows "the essence of Wolsey – the plain English churchman who nevertheless made his sovereign the arbiter of Europe and who built and furnished Hampton Court to show foreign embassies that Henry VIII's chief minister knew how to live as graciously as any cardinal in Rome.

[17]Henry VIII and his courtiers visited Wolsey at Hampton Court in masque costume in January 1527, disguised as shepherds to play mumchance and dance.

[19][20] The architecture of King Henry's new palace followed the design precedent set by Wolsey: perpendicular Gothic-inspired Tudor with restrained Renaissance ornament.

This hybrid architecture was to remain almost unchanged for nearly a century, until Inigo Jones introduced strong classical influences from Italy to the London palaces of the first Stuart kings.

Still functioning, the clock shows the time of day, the phases of the moon, the month, the quarter of the year, the date, the sun and star sign, and high water at London Bridge.

In 1537, the King's much desired male heir, the future Edward VI, was born at the palace, and the child's mother, Jane Seymour, died there two weeks later.

It was to Hampton Court that Queen Mary I (Henry's elder daughter) retreated with King Philip to spend her honeymoon, after their wedding at Winchester.

[27] Two entertainments for the Stuart court were staged in the Great Hall in January 1604, The Masque of Indian and China Knights and The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses.

However, Hampton Court, unlike Versailles, is given an extra dimension by the contrast between the pink brick and the pale Portland stone quoins, frames and banding.

[37] Other artists commissioned to decorate the rooms included Grinling Gibbons, Sir James Thornhill and Jacques Rousseau; furnishings were designed by Daniel Marot.

In fact, George III, from the moment of his accession, never set foot in the palace: he associated the state apartments with a humiliating scene when his grandfather had once struck him following an innocent remark.

Many of the palace rooms were adapted to be rent-free apartments, with vacant ones allocated by the Lord Chamberlain to applicants to reward past services rendered to the Crown.

The heavy-handed restoration plan at this time reduced the Great Gatehouse (A), the palace's principal entrance, by two storeys and removed the lead cupolas adorning its four towers.

Their former home, the Cartoon Gallery on the south side of the Fountain Court, was designed by Christopher Wren; copies painted in the 1690s by a minor artist, Henry Cooke, are now displayed in their place.

[58] The King's Guard Chamber contains a large quantity of arms: muskets, pistols, swords, daggers, powder horns and pieces of armour arranged on the walls in decorative patterns.

[citation needed] In addition, Hampton Court holds the majority of the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection, with a smaller amount being held at Kensington Palace, where it is displayed.

[59] The timber and plaster ceiling of the chapel is considered the "most important and magnificent in Britain",[26] but is all that remains of the Tudor decoration, after redecoration supervised by Sir Christopher Wren.

[60] Today, the dominating feature of the grounds is the great landscaping scheme constructed for Sir Christopher Wren's intended new palace.

The design, radical at the time, is another immediately recognizable influence from Versailles and was indeed laid out by pupils of André Le Nôtre, Louis XIV's landscape gardener.

This privilege was first extended about 1817 by Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, to his friend, Lieutenant General James Moore, and his new bride, Cecilia Watson.

[63] A well-known curiosity of the palace's grounds is Hampton Court Maze; planted in the 1690s by George London and Henry Wise for William III.

Sited on the former Chapel Court Garden, it has been planted with flowers and herbs from the 16th century and is completed by gilded heraldic beasts and bold green and white painted fences.

[66] There are ten statues of heraldic animals, called the King's Beasts, that stand on the bridge over the moat leading to the great gatehouse.

Unlike the Queen's Beasts in Kew Gardens, these statues represent the ancestry of King Henry VIII and his third wife Jane Seymour.

[70] The palace has been used as a location for filming film and television shows, including The Private Life of Henry VIII, Three Men In A Boat, A Man For All Seasons, Vanity Fair, Little Dorrit, John Adams (2008), The Young Victoria, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, The Theory of Everything, Cinderella, Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!, The Favourite, Belgravia, The Great, and Bridgerton.