Royal Hospital Chelsea

The Royal Hospital Chelsea stands as a permanent home for retired veterans of the British Army, built on a site that was once a dangerous, lawless outpost. In the late seventeenth century, this stretch of land was so riddled with armed robbery that the local pensioners themselves were occasionally deployed to maintain order and confront ruffians in the streets. King Charles the Second commissioned the architect Sir Christopher Wren to create this sanctuary in sixteen eighty two, intending it to serve as a dignified refuge for soldiers broken by the demands of age and war.