The
Palace of Whitehall (or
Palace of White Hall) was the main residence of the
English monarchs in
London from 1530 until 1698 when most of its structures, except for
Inigo Jones's 1622
Banqueting House, were destroyed by fire. Before then, it had grown to be the largest palace in Europe with more than 1,500 rooms, overtaking the
Vatican and
Versailles. The palace gives its name,
Whitehall, to the road on which many of the current administrative buildings of the
UK government are situated, and hence
metonymically to the central government itself.