Lambeth Palace - the official London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual leader of the Anglican Church. The place is on the bank of the Thames, just across from Westminster, the church has a long (and not only) history.

The archbishop's residence housed here since the XIII century, and in the XIV century it was tried by an ecclesiastical court forerunner of the English Protestant John Wycliffe. From that era remained Gothic chapel. In 1440 the tower was built Lollard - so called fled to England members of the Christian egalitarian community from Flanders, who joined the movement Wycliffe and took part in the rebellion of Wat Tyler. Lollards themselves left England long before the construction of the tower, but the dissidents in the prison during the English Revolution, outlasted a lot. More later, in the era of the Tudors, it was built red brick entrance to the palace grounds.

During the Civil War, the Big Hall of the palace troops looted Cromwell. After the Restoration, it was rebuilt by Archbishop William Jackson, in which for the first time in a hundred years was used for the roof exposed wooden farm complex design - a great legacy of British carpenters Middle Ages. The palace turned into the spirit of the archaic with gothic elements. In the XIX century it was renewed in the neo-Gothic architect Edward Blore (author of the Alupka Palace in the Crimea).

The palace is exhibited a collection of portraits of the Anglican archbishop, which include paintings by Holbein, van Dyck, Hogarth and Reynolds. There is also the official library of the Archbishop of Canterbury, founded back in 1610. Some of the manuscripts are stored in it belong to the IX century, that is, to the era before the Norman Conquest. Public Library contains more than 120,000 volumes, including - New Testament Johannes Gutenberg, published in Mainz in the fifties of the XV century, and handwritten Lambeth Bible, yet priceless heritage of Romanesque England.

Archbishop Park, adjacent to the palace, is publicly available. Although the palace is the home of the Archbishop and his family in the days when the spiritual leader of the Church of England is in London, it is possible to visit the residence with a guide.