Palace of Placentia

Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, regent during the minority of his nephew Henry VI, began building on the south bank of the Thames at Greenwich, downstream of London, in 1433, under the name Bella Court. On the hill behind it he built Duke Humphrey's Tower, later known as Greenwich Castle, which was demolished to make way for the Royal Observatory. In 1447 Humphrey fell out of favour with Henry VI and was arrested for high treason. He died in prison, likely of a stroke, though it was popularly believed that he had been murdered, the version Shakespeare later used in his Henry VI plays. Margaret of Anjou took Bella Court over and renamed it the Palace of Placentia, sometimes written as the Palace of Pleasaunce.

Edward IV gave land and property beside the palace for a friary of the Observant Friars, a branch of the Franciscans, and in 1485, after papal approval, the community was formally established in a newly built church and cloister. The friary church served as the chapel royal at Greenwich and was used for royal baptisms and marriages, among them the marriage of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon and the christenings of the future queens Mary I and Elizabeth I. The friars were persecuted during the English Reformation and were finally expelled by Elizabeth I in 1559.

Henry VIII was born at the palace in 1491. Henry VII rebuilt the riverside palace between 1498 and 1504, with Robert Vertue as master mason. The work followed a "platt of Greenwich which was devised by the Queen", crediting Elizabeth of York with a large hand in the design. The king's lodgings stood on the bank of the Thames and included a five-storey tower, or donjon, which along with the lodgings seems to have drawn on Burgundian models such as the ducal palace at Ghent and the Princehof at Bruges. The original building was of brick and timber, its red-brick face a display of the monarchy's wealth at a time when the material was expensive to make and reckoned an extravagance, and it ran along some 200 metres of riverbank with access by boat. Greenwich remained the principal royal palace for the next two centuries.

Greenwich figured largely in Henry VIII's life. On New Year's Day 1512 six ladies held a stage-set castle called the Fortress Dangerous against the king and his companions. On 1 May 1515 Henry and Catherine of Aragon rode from Greenwich to breakfast in an arbour built in a wood at Shooter's Hill, Catherine and her ladies in Spanish-style riding gear and the king in green velvet, with the royal guard disguised as Robin Hood and his men. Mary I was born at the palace in 1516, and Elizabeth I in 1533, after Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn; new wooden coops were made for the peacocks and a pelican further from the palace because their calls disturbed Anne Boleyn in the mornings. Henry married Anne of Cleves at Greenwich in 1540. Both Mary and Elizabeth lived at the palace for some years.

Under James I and Charles I the Queen's House was put up to the south of the palace, commissioned by Anne of Denmark and designed by Inigo Jones; it is often credited as the first classical building in England. When James I ordered the chapel redecorated in May 1623 it had not been refurbished since the reign of Mary I. The palace fell into disrepair during the English Civil War, serving time as a biscuit factory and a prisoner-of-war camp. In 1660 Charles II decided to rebuild it and engaged John Webb as architect for a new King's House, but the only section completed was the east range of the present King Charles Court, and that was never occupied as a royal residence. Most of the rest was demolished and the site lay empty until building of the Greenwich Hospital began in 1694.

Drainage work in late 2005 turned up Tudor remains that had not been recorded, and a full excavation completed in January 2006 found the Tudor chapel and vestry with its tiled floor in place; the vestry had escaped demolition and had become the house of the treasurer of Greenwich Hospital. The site has been a scheduled monument since March 2013. Two further Tudor rooms were uncovered in 2017 during construction of the visitors' centre for the painted hall, one of them fitted with bee holes for keeping hives through the winter, the other thought to be part of the service range.