About
Wilton House, three miles west of Salisbury in Wiltshire, has been the seat of the Earls of Pembroke since 1544 — nearly 500 years of unbroken family occupation — and contains some of the most magnificent rooms in English domestic architecture alongside one of the richest art collections in private hands in Britain. The house occupies the site of a Benedictine nunnery dissolved by Henry VIII, who gave the land to William Herbert, the 1st Earl of Pembroke, in 1544. The Herbert family, created earls and given extensive Crown favours, rapidly established Wilton as one of the grandest private houses in England, and the artistic life they fostered made it an intellectual centre of considerable European importance.
The house standing today is largely the creation of Inigo Jones and his nephew John Webb, who rebuilt the south wing following a fire in 1647-1648. Jones, already England's most celebrated architect and the man who had introduced Palladian classicism to the country at the Queen's House in Greenwich and the Banqueting House in Whitehall, created at Wilton a sequence of State Rooms of supreme magnificence. The Double Cube Room — 60 feet long, 30 feet wide, 30 feet high — is the supreme achievement, a room of perfect Palladian proportions hung with Van Dyck's family portraits commissioned for this specific space, with carved overmantels by Edward Pierce, gilded ceilings, and carved doorcase surrounds of breathtaking quality. The Single Cube Room, adjacent, is equally remarkable in its more intimate scale.
The art collection at Wilton is one of the finest in private ownership in England. The Van Dyck portraits in the Double Cube Room — the full-length group portrait of the Pembroke family among the most celebrated compositions in English art — are complemented throughout the house by works attributed to Rembrandt (a self-portrait of the 1630s), Brueghel, Rubens, Luca Giordano, and a succession of other Old Masters assembled through the connoisseurship of the 3rd, 4th, and 8th Earls. The collection of antique sculpture, accumulated during the Grand Tour era, includes significant pieces of Roman and Greek origin.
The grounds contain one of only three Palladian bridges in England — built in 1737 by the 9th Earl — spanning a tributary of the River Nadder in the park, together with a Capability Brown-influenced landscape of lawns, specimen trees, and a formal water garden. Wilton House is famous as a filming location: The Crown, Mrs Brown (Mrs Brown's Boys), Schindler's List, Pride and Prejudice, and numerous other productions have used its rooms and grounds. Shakespeare is traditionally said to have staged As You Like It here in 1603, and the house's literary connections continue in the person of Philip Sidney, who wrote the Arcadia here in the 1580s.
Categories:
Annual Visitors (2019)
80,000
Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
📅 Best Times to Visit
Quietest: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Busiest: Saturday, Sunday
💡 Weekday mornings in May, June or September for the quietest experience of the State Rooms — the quality of the Van Dyck portraits is best appreciated without crowds. Morning light in the Double Cube Room is exceptional.
💡 Visitor Tips
- Stand at the west end of the Double Cube Room and look east — allow 10 full minutes to absorb the proportions, the Van Dyck group portrait, the ceiling, and the carved woodwork before moving on. This room rewards slow, careful looking.
- Ask the room stewards about specific paintings — they are exceptionally knowledgeable about the collection's history and happy to explain the context of individual works.
- Walk to the Palladian Bridge in the park after the house — it takes 10 minutes and the view back to the house from the bridge is one of the most composed views in Wiltshire.
- Combine Wilton with Salisbury Cathedral (3 miles) for an outstanding day exploring the finest architecture in Wiltshire. Both are within 20 minutes by car or 40 minutes by bus.
- Check the website before visiting — the house closes for private events (weddings, corporate functions) and occasional special events. A wasted journey to a closed house is easily avoided.
- The Historic Houses Association (HHA) membership gives free entry — if you visit multiple historic houses in a year, membership is excellent value.
- Photography is generally permitted in the State Rooms — the Double Cube Room is one of the most beautiful rooms in England and deserves careful photography. Avoid flash near the Van Dycks.
- The village of Wilton itself is worth a few minutes — the extraordinary 19th-century Italianate church (St Mary and St Nicholas) built by the 11th Earl is architecturally remarkable and usually open.
Highlights
The Double Cube Room — England's Most Perfect Interior
The Double Cube Room at Wilton House is widely regarded as the most magnificent room in any English country house — a space of such perfect Palladian proportion, such sustained quality in every detail, and such unity between architecture and contents that it stands as the consummate achievement of English classical interior design.
Designed by Inigo Jones around 1648-1653, the room measures exactly 60 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 30 feet high — the double cube proportion being a Vitruvian ideal that Jones had learned in Italy. The walls are hung with Sir Anthony van Dyck's great family group portrait of the 4th Earl of Pembroke with his family, commissioned for this very room, alongside other Van Dyck portraits of the period.
The carved overmantel by Edward Pierce, the gilded ceiling with its painted panels, and the carved wood surrounds of the doors and windows are all of the highest quality.
Van Dyck's Pembroke Family Portrait
The great group portrait of Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke, with his family, painted by Sir Anthony van Dyck around 1634-1635, is one of the most celebrated paintings in England and one of the finest family portraits of the 17th century. Measuring approximately 330 × 510 cm, it dominates the end wall of the Double Cube Room for which it was specifically commissioned — a deliberate act of artistic patronage that made architecture and painting co-dependent in a way rarely achieved in English interiors.
Van Dyck, who had been appointed Principal Painter to Charles I in 1632, was at the height of his powers when he painted this work: the handling of silk, velvet, and armour, the psychological acuity of the individual portraits, and the compositional skill with which a large group is made coherent are all masterful.
The other Van Dyck portraits throughout the State Rooms are collectively one of the finest groups of his work in private ownership anywhere.
Inigo Jones and the Birth of English Classical Architecture
Wilton House is among the most important works of Inigo Jones, the man who introduced Palladian classicism to England and transformed English architecture permanently. Jones had studied Palladio's buildings in Italy and returned to England with a complete understanding of Renaissance architectural theory — an understanding he applied at the Banqueting House (1619-1622) and the Queen's House at Greenwich before the Wilton commission.
The south range at Wilton, rebuilt after a fire c.
1647-1653 with his nephew John Webb, represents Jones's most complete surviving residential interior — the Double and Single Cube Rooms together forming a suite of exceptional quality. The precision of the Palladian proportional system, the quality of the carved woodwork, and the sophisticated integration of painted decoration with architectural elements make the Wilton rooms a textbook of English classical interior design.
The Old Masters Collection
Beyond the celebrated Van Dyck portraits, the Wilton House collection includes works of the highest quality across five centuries of European painting. A self-portrait attributed to Rembrandt van Rijn, dating from the 1630s, is among the most significant Old Master works in private hands in England.
Works by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, a mythological composition by Peter Paul Rubens, and paintings by Luca Giordano, Carlo Maratta, and other Italian Baroque masters are distributed through the State Rooms and corridors.
The antique sculpture collection, assembled during the Grand Tour era by the 8th Earl of Pembroke in the early 18th century, includes significant pieces of Roman marble work. Together, the paintings and sculpture represent one of the finest surviving examples of aristocratic collecting in the English country house tradition.
Collections
State Rooms
The principal suite of State Rooms including the Double Cube Room, Single Cube Room, Corner Room, and Corridor, displaying the Pembroke family's collections of paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts.
📍 South wing, Wilton House
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.