H is for ... Henry .. n ... Humongous

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V... 

All through April I'll be posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

H is for  Henry VIII and his Hampton Court Palace

I come to this post a little heavy hearted... because I could only find this one photograph of the many I took during my visit. It was ooh, a long time ago - the previous millennium actually, the DLSR was far in the future and phone cameras were not even a twinkle in anyone's eyes, I'd gone armed with my regular film camera and rolls of 36 exposures and probably used up more than half the roll there. Collateral damage of relocations - all but this one are gone, couldn't even locate the negatives. 

However, onward and upward! Hampton Court Palace drew me because of my interest in the Tudors and in particular Henry VIII. It spans more than the Tudors though, as the palace combines Tudor, Baroque and even Victorian architectural elements in it, in all half a millennium of history. 

The Palace is not just a series of halls and chambers, architectural and landscape features, but a museum that recreates the life of the Tudor court through tableaux, holograms and lasers, live actors and films. There's lots to take in both indoors and outdoors. 

Hampton Court Palace Gardens with the view of the 300 year old
Yews. Planted in early 1700s for William (III) and Mary's (II)
Baroque Palace.

Hampton Court was one of my first experiences of an interactive museum, it had actors dressed in period attire act out the parts of courtiers of Henry, exhibits of tapestries, the great hall and details of a court numbering 400-1500 people sitting down to meals there twice a day, the Tudor kitchens with that huge blackened hearth and faux meat and fish in various stages of preparation from raw to plated. I had walked through the Guard and Presence Chambers in the Baroque Palace, where the entrance was barred by holographic guards with crossed spears just as real guards would have done before they let in the courtiers come for an audience with the king. There was a film on the making of the palace - Henry acquiring it from Wolsey and expanding the Tudor part, and later, the Baroque Palace being built for William and Mary in the 18th century. Apart from the layers of history inside, there's the massive garden - the 300 year old yew plantings and the Maze are exhibits on their own. 

Things are even more luscious now, I understand that actual chefs come in and recreate Tudor recipes in live stations. There are flower shows in the spring and summer, musical concerts, some event or other going on the whole year. No wonder Hampton Court Palace is such a popular visitor attraction - it  gets around 700,000 visitors annually. Read more about the Palace by clinking on this link. 

H is for Hatshepsut's Temple

Hatshepsut was a rare female pharaoh who among other things, built this humongous mortuary temple on the West Bank of the Nile, just opposite the Karnak temple in Luxor. Hattie actually wore many hats, coregent, warrior, military campaigner, expander of trade, builder of monuments, planter of gardens, sailor of seas, courtier whisperer and full pharaoh assuming the male regalia as her powers blossomed.  No historian has quite figured out how she persuaded the Egyptian noblemen of her horribly gender-unequal times to accept her as the ruler...

The temple is built on a grand scale on three levels, approached by a long ramp set into a cliffside. There are chapels to Anubis and Hathor,  while Hatshepsut is herself depicted as Osiris, the various gods of the Ancient Egyptian pantheon. The main sanctuary is dedicated to Amun-Ra or the supreme sun god. Several reliefs inside the temple show scenes from Hatshepsut's life, such as her voyage to Punt. The mortuary temple was built around 3500 years ago. After the advent of Christianity in Egypt, the temple was used by monks which gives the place its current name Deir al Bahari, Deir in Arabic means a monastery. 

Entrance to the main sanctuary. No entry when I visited.

I have visited Luxor twice, both very long ago now and both times included the Temple.  Around 5 million tourists visit Luxor each year and a significant chunk of them would stop at the Temple. Read more about Hatshepsut's Temple by clicking the link here.

H is also for the ruins of Hampi which I hope to visit sometime. Hampi was the capital city of the Vijayanagar Empire in the Indian Deccan, built between the 14th and 16th centuries. Its fabulously wealthy rulers constructed the city - forts, temples, palaces, in the Dravidian style which showcases the best of South Indian art and architecture.  Hampi was conquered in 1565 by a Muslim confederacy, pillaged, and abandoned. It is one of the 44 UNESCO heritage sites located in India. On my wishlist since teenage when a cousin made a trip there from Bangalore and came back with the most astonishing descriptions of its exquisite monuments. 

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Did you know that Henry's favourite home -  Hampton Court Palace is haunted? Two of his queens - Jane Seymour and Catherine Howard, are said to haunt the palace. Read more about their sightings here. 

Thank you for visiting and reading. Have a wonderful A-Z if you are taking the Challenge and a wonderful April if you're not!

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2026