Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: Who designed Blenheim Palace?
The architect selected for the ambitious project was a controversial one. The Duchess was known to favour Sir Christopher Wren, famous for St Paul's Cathedral and many other national buildings. The Duke however, following a chance meeting at a playhouse, is said to have commissioned Sir John Vanbrugh there and then. Vanbrugh, a popular dramatist, was an untrained architect, who usually worked in conjunction with the trained and practical Nicholas Hawksmoor. The duo had recently completed the first stages of the Baroque Castle Howard. This huge Yorkshire mansion was one of England's first houses in the flamboyant European Baroque style. The success of Castle Howard led Marlborough to commission something similar at Woodstock.[15]
An investigative journalist determined that, in fact, Chinese tour operators charge $68 extra for Chinese language tours of nearby Blenheim Palace. Tourists who do not want to pay to visit Blenheim are dropped off in Kidlington, which they find charming, but which tour operators select because it is too far from Blenheim to enable tourists to walk to the Palace and pay the cheaper £25 price for public tours in English.
Designed in the rare, and short-lived, English Baroque style, architectural appreciation of the palace is as divided today as it was in the 1720s.[3] It is unique in its combined use as a family home, mausoleum and national monument. The palace is notable as the birthplace and ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill.
The palace chapel, as a consequence of the Duke's death, now obtained even greater importance. The design was altered by the Marlboroughs' friend the Earl of Godolphin, who placed the high altar in defiance of religious convention against the west wall, thus allowing the dominating feature to be the Duke's gargantuan tomb and sarcophagus. Commissioned by the Duchess in 1730, it was designed by William Kent, and statues of the Duke and Duchess depicted as Caesar and Caesarina adorn the great sarcophagus. In bas relief at the base of the tomb, the Duchess ordered to be depicted the surrender of Marshal Tallard. However, the theme throughout the palace of honouring the Duke did not reach its apotheosis until the dowager duchess's death in 1744. Then, the Duke's coffin was returned to Blenheim from its temporary resting place, Westminster Abbey, and husband and wife were interred together and the tomb erected and completed.[31] Now Blenheim had indeed become a pantheon and mausoleum. Successive Dukes and their wives are also interred in the vault beneath the chapel. Other members of family are interred in St. Martin's parish churchyard at Bladon, a short distance from the palace.[32]
As the end-paper illustrations in the book show, the ruinous estate of Malplaquet has similarities with Stowe in Buckinghamshire, where White had taught at Stowe School during the 1930s, while the house is more like Blenheim Palace, the residence of the Dukes of Marlborough. The name is an allusion to Blenheim which depends upon knowing that the Battle of Blenheim was the first of the great Marlborough's major victories, while Malplaquet was his fourth and last. The titular Repose is a tiny forgotten island in the middle of an ornamental lake in the vast grounds of Malplaquet. A structure on it is occupied by descendants of the Lilliputians, brought to England two centuries earlier by a sea-captain, following their discovery by Lemuel Gulliver. The island provides the perfect setting for their timid and secretive civilisation, accessible only by boat and protected by a wall of brambles which is carefully cultivated by the island's occupants. Many of the monuments in the grounds of Malplaquet recall notable figures of the early 18th century; "Mistress Masham's Repose" itself commemorates Abigail Masham, a close confidante of Queen Anne. Although she has no other bearing on the story, she was a cousin of Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, thus providing another link between the fictional Palace of Malplaquet and the real Blenheim Palace. Blenheim and Stowe are in turn linked to each other, in that Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham, who developed the house and gardens at Stowe in the early eighteenth century, was a notable soldier who had served under the Duke of Marlborough.
The palace, park, and gardens are open to the public on payment of an entry fee (maximum £24.90 as of October2016).[55] Separation of tourist entertainment attractions (the "Pleasure Gardens") from the palace ensures that the atmosphere of a large country house is retained. The palace is linked to the gardens by a miniature railway, the Blenheim Park Railway.[56]
The Wakestock 2008 music and wakeboarding festival took place at the front of Blenheim Palace in June 2008
Film & TV productions that have shot scenes at Blenheim Palace, include the following:
Blenheim Palace is an English country house situated in the civil parish of Blenheim near Woodstock, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. The Palace was a gift from Queen Anne to the 1st Duke of Marlborough for his victory at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. Designated by the United Nations as a World Heritage Site in 1987, Blenheim Palace is also the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill. Handed down through successive generations, the palace continues to be resided in by the Spencer-Churchill family and is the official seat of the current and 12th Duke of Marlborough, Jamie Spencer-Churchill.
Blenheim is a town in Marlboro County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 137 at the 2000 census. It is named for Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England which itself is named for the Battle of Blenheim, a major English victory of the War of the Spanish Succession at what is now Blindheim, Germany. Blenheim Palace was the residence of the Duke of Marlborough, after whom Marlboro County is named.
The British painter John Piper (1903–1992) was commissioned to paint scenes in the grounds of the palace during the 1980s. In 2012, an exhibition of the artist's work entitled "John Piper at Blenheim Palace" was held in a room at the palace to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Piper's death.
In October 2004, British jazz-pop pianist Jamie Cullum released "Live at Blenheim Palace," a 145-minute live concert DVD of his performance at the Blenheim Palace Music Festival on 1 July 2004.
—Plaque above the East gate of Blenheim Palace
The Palace was designed by John Vanbrugh, in a heavy Italo-Corinthian style. It was designated to John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough. Most of the palace was paid for by the nation. Churchill was given this palace in honour for his victories over the French and the Bavarians at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704, during the War of the Spanish Succession.
The parish of St Martin's includes Blenheim Palace, the family seat of the Duke of Marlborough. Most members of the Spencer-Churchill family are interred in St. Martin's parish churchyard at Bladon; only the Dukes and Duchesses are buried in the Blenheim Palace chapel. Blenheim Palace is also the birthplace of Winston Churchill, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1940–45 and again 1951–55. Like his parents, he was buried in St. Martin's parish churchyard after his death in 1965; his wife Clementine was buried in the same grave after her own death 12 years later.
The family seat of the Dukes of Marlborough is Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire. Most Spencer-Churchills are interred in the churchyard of St Martin's Church, Bladon, a short distance from the palace; only the Dukes and Duchesses are buried in the Blenheim Palace chapel.
The BBC Radio Four programme "Just a Minute" was recorded (twice) at Blenheim with Clement Freud, Derek Nimmo, Peter Jones and Kit Hesketh-Harvey. They were broadcast in 1998.American musician Barry Manilow performed a concert for over 40,000 fans on the grounds of the Palace on August 27, 1983. The recorded concert was released on VHS and later on DVD as "Barry Manilow: The Concert at Blenheim Palace."
Blenheim Palace was built, on a different site, in the grounds of the disused royal Palace of Woodstock, and the name was also part of the extraordinary honour when the house was given by a grateful nation to a great general, the Duke of Marlborough. Along with several royal and episcopal palaces in the countryside, Blenheim does demonstrate that "palace" has no specific urban connotation in English. On the use of the term "palace" in the UK, it is notable that Buckingham Palace was known as Buckingham House before it was acquired by the monarchy.
Blenheim is a civil parish in West Oxfordshire, England, about north of Oxford. It includes Blenheim Palace.
In 1900, Josiah White III bought a parcel of land between Ohio Avenue and Park Place on the Boardwalk, and built the Queen Anne style Marlborough House. The hotel was financially successful and, in 1905, he chose to expand. White hired Philadelphia architect Will Price of Price and McLanahan to design a new, separate tower to be called the Blenheim. 
"Blenheim" refers to Blenheim Palace in England, the ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill, a grandson of the Duke of Marlborough.
"SOFTER: Jenny Holzer at Blenheim Palace" (28 September - 31 December 2017) was a solo exhibition by American artist Jenny Holzer. The exhibition featured over fifty works concerning themes of modern conflict, history and memory. The first time Holzer visited Blenheim Palace, she became fascinated by the Palace’s own military history — not only the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill but also built as a reward to John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough for the Duke’s military victory against the French and Bavarians in the 1704 Battle of Blenheim. Holzer took this as a starting point to look at the timeless and universal theme of war, across history and countries. The exhibition showcased the breadth of Holzer's practice, from paintings, stoneworks, and electronic signs, to installations of black mondo grass and displays of human bones. Many of the works were site-specific, made in response to the Palace. Amongst these featured the light projection display ON WAR hosted for twelve nights after dark at the Palace. Using ten projectors beaming Holzer's text onto the Palace facade, this was Holzer's most ambitious light projection display to date.
Blenheim Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is next to Woodstock, in the parish of Blenheim. Winston Churchill was born in Blenheim Palace in 1874 and is buried in the nearby village of Bladon.
Vanbrugh's severe massed Baroque used at Blenheim never truly caught the public imagination, and was quickly superseded by the revival of the Palladian style. Vanbrugh's reputation was irreparably damaged, and he received no further truly great public commissions. For his final design, Seaton Delaval Hall, which was hailed as his masterpiece, he used a refined version of the Baroque employed at Blenheim. He died shortly before its completion.[18]
In the design of great 18th-century houses comfort and convenience were subservient to magnificence, and this is certainly the case at Blenheim. This magnificence over creature comfort is heightened as the architect's brief was to create not only a home but also a national monument to reflect the power and civilisation of the nation. To create this monumental effect, Vanbrugh chose to design in a severe Baroque style, using great masses of stone to imitate strength and create shadow as decoration.[24]
Blenheim Palace (in England) and Hamilton Palace (in Scotland, demolished in 1927) are the only non-royal (and non-episcopal) residences to have the word "palace" in their name, other than Dalkeith Palace in Scotland, which used to be the seat of the Dukes of Buccleuch (who descend from Charles II of England).