Westminster Abbey, Westminster Palace

1600x1200   1024x768   200x150

Westminster Abbey

 

The Westminster Abbey, which goes by the formal name The Collegiate Church of St. Peter at Westminster, is a large Gothic church located on the west of the Palace of Westminster.

This UNESCO World Heritage Site has its origin in 616 AD when the site was still known as Thorn Ey. The present structure was built in 1245 by Henry III, and is currently hailed as one of the most

important Gothic buildings in the country.

All English and British monarchs, starting from King Harold and William the Conqueror (1066), were crowned in the Westminster Abbey except Edward V and Edward VIII. Prominent people were also buried in the site, including Henry III, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Blake, John Keats, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, Henry Purcell and other artists, scientists, politicians and doctors.

Other important areas in the Westminster Abbey include the Organ (built in 1937), Bells (overhauled in 1971) and the Westminster Abbey museum, an old area of the Abbey, which features collection of funeral effigies and the England's oldest altar piece, the Westminster Retable.

The Westminster Abbey has become a popular choice for the setting of the movie adaptation

of The Da Vinci Code (2005), but eventually turned it down because of the material’s

anti-theological nature.