Queen's House

Inigo Jones designed the Queen's House in 1616 for Anne of Denmark, and when the exterior was finished in 1635 for Henrietta Maria it was the first fully classical building raised in England. Four centuries later it is still the most striking room in Greenwich: a white villa on the axis between the park and the river, at the centre of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, hung with the national maritime art collection and open to the public for free. Royal Museums Greenwich lets it privately, in the evening, with the galleries closed behind you.

The Great Hall is the building's argument in one room, a perfect 40-foot cube with its original black and white marble floor and a gold-leaf ceiling installation by Richard Wright, added for the 400th anniversary refurbishment in 2016. It takes 120 seated, and the balcony that runs round it at first-floor level is the reason every photograph of a dinner here is taken from above. Below, the Undercroft is three linked vaulted chambers for 150 standing, which is where the dancing goes. Upstairs the Orangery and two South Parlours open south onto the colonnades and Greenwich Park, three adjoining rooms that work as one reception for 120 or separately for 40.

A house this old sets terms, and Royal Museums Greenwich publishes them plainly: an approved supplier list for catering and production, no naked flames, nothing fixed to the walls, and amplified music capped at 80 decibels. Read that as the shape of the evening rather than an obstacle. This is a candlelit dinner under a Turner Prize ceiling with drinks on a colonnade looking at the Observatory, and a room in the vaults for afterwards.