The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parliament, the Palace lies on the north bank of the River Thames in the City of Westminster, in central London, England.

Sir Charles Barry's collaborative design for the Palace of Westminster uses the Perpendicular Gothic style, which was popular during the 15th century and returned during the Gothic revival of the 19th century. Barry was a classical architect, but he was aided by the Gothic architect Augustus Pugin. Westminster Hall, which was built in the 11th century and survived the fire of 1834, was incorporated in Barry's design. Pugin was displeased with the result of the work, especially with the symmetrical layout designed by Barry; he famously remarked, "All Grecian, sir; Tudor details on a classic body".

In 1839 Charles Barry toured Britain, looking at quarries and buildings, with a committee which included two leading geologists and a stonecarver.[36] They selected Anston, a sand-coloured magnesian limestone quarried in the villages of Anston, South Yorkshire, and Mansfield Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire.[37] Two quarries were chosen from a list of 102, with the majority of the stone coming from the former. A crucial consideration was transportation, achieved on water via the Chesterfield Canal, the North Sea, and the rivers Trent and Thames.[38] Furthermore, Anston was cheaper, and "could be supplied in blocks up to four feet thick and lent itself to elaborate carving".

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Pontivy is a commune in the Morbihan department in Brittany in north-western France. It lies at the confluence of the river Blavet and the Canal de Nantes à Brest. Inhabitants of Pontivy are called Pontivyens in French.

A monk called Ivy built a bridge nearby over the river Blavet in the 7th century, and the town is named after him ("pont-Ivi" being the Breton for "Ivy's bridge"). From November 9, 1804, the name was changed to Napoléonville after Napoléon Bonaparte, under whom it had around 3,000 inhabitants. After his downfall, it was renamed Pontivy again, then later Bourbonville, and Napoléonville again after Napoléon III came to power.

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The Victor Emmanuel II National Monument (Italian: Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II), also known as Vittoriano or Altare della Patria ("Altar of the Fatherland"), is a large national monument built between 1885 and 1935 to honour Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of a unified Italy, in Rome, Italy. It occupies a site between the Piazza Venezia and the Capitoline Hill. The monument was realized by Giuseppe Sacconi.

From an architectural perspective, it was conceived as a modern forum, an agora on three levels connected by stairways and dominated by a portico characterized by a colonnade. The complex process of national unity and liberation from foreign domination carried out by King Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy, to whom the monument is dedicated, has a great symbolic and representative value, being architecturally and artistically centred on the Italian unification—for this reason the Vittoriano is considered one of the national symbols of Italy.

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The Court of Cassation is one of the four courts of last resort in France. It has jurisdiction over all civil and criminal matters triable in the judicial system, and is the supreme court of appeal in these cases. It has jurisdiction to review the law, and to certify questions of law, to determine miscarriages of justice. The Court is located in the Palace of Justice in Paris.

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The Palais de Justice; '"Palace of Justice"), is a judicial center and courthouse in Paris, located on the Île de la Cité. It contains the Court of Appeal of Paris, the busiest appellate court in France, and France's highest court for ordinary cases, the Court of Cassation.

The Palais de Justice occupies a large part of the medieval Palais de la Cité, the former royal palace of the Kings of France, which also includes Sainte Chapelle, the royal chapel, and the Conciergerie, a notorious former prison, which operated from 1380 to 1914. It is located in close proximity to the Tribunal of Commerce, the Prefecture of Police of Paris, and the offices of the Paris Bar Association.

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The SIS Building or MI6 Building at Vauxhall Cross houses the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, MI6), the United Kingdom's foreign intelligence agency. It is located at 85 Albert Embankment in Vauxhall, a south western part of central London, on the bank of the River Thames beside Vauxhall Bridge. The building has been the headquarters of the SIS since 1994.

Previously based at 54 Broadway, the SIS relocated to Century House, a 22-storey office block on Westminster Bridge Road, Lambeth, near Lambeth North and Waterloo stations, in 1964.[5] Its location at Century House was classified information, though The Daily Telegraph reported that it was "London's worst-kept secret, known only to every taxi driver, tourist guide and KGB agent". Century House was described as "irredeemably insecure" in a 1985 National Audit Office (NAO) report with security concerns raised in a survey; the modernist building was made largely of glass, and had a petrol station at its base. Security concerns combined with the remaining short leasehold and cost of modernising the building were important factors in moving to a new headquarters

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The Admiralty buildings complex lies between Whitehall, Horse Guards Parade and The Mall and includes five inter-connected buildings. Since the Admiralty no longer exists as a department, these buildings are now used by separate government departments.

The oldest building was long known simply as The Admiralty; it is now known officially as the Ripley Building, a three-storey U-shaped brick building designed by Thomas Ripley and completed in 1726. Alexander Pope implied that the architecture is rather dull, lacking either the vigour of the Baroque style, fading from fashion at the time, or the austere grandeur of the Palladian style just coming into vogue. It is mainly notable for being perhaps the first purpose-built office building in Great Britain. It contained the Admiralty board room, which is still used by the Admiralty, other state rooms, offices and apartments for the Lords of the Admiralty. Robert Adam designed the screen, which was added to the entrance front in 1788.

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The earliest mention of a building on the site was when a structure referred to as the "Market House", which contained a supply of arms, was seized during an uprising by a group of some 600 royalists in 1648 during the English Civil War; the revolt was put down by Sir Michael Livesey and his parliamentary troops.

A new building of Portland Stone financed by Arthur Ingram, 6th Viscount of Irvine and containing a poultry and butter market was completed in 1712.[3] The building fell into disrepair and was substantially rebuilt with funding from Charles Howard, 11th Duke of Norfolk in 1812. Although the facade was retained, it was largely rebuilt again with support from Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 15th Duke of Norfolk in 1888. It was originally used as a facility for dispensing justice and a meeting place for the local town council but, following the implementation of the Local Government Act 1888, which established county councils in every county, it also became the meeting place of West Sussex County Council.

After the County Council moved to Edes House in Chichester in 1916, the Old Town Hall continued to be used as a courthouse and, for a while, was used as a meeting place for Horsham Urban District Council.

Important trials in the court house including the initial stages of the trial of John Haigh, commonly known as the Acid Bath Murderer, who murdered six people and disposed of their bodies using sulphuric acid; he was committed for trial at Lewes Assizes in April 1949.

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The Weald and Downland Living Museum (formerly known as the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum until January 2017) is an open-air museum in Singleton, West Sussex.

The museum principally promotes the retention of buildings on their original sites unless there is no alternative, and encourages an informed and sympathetic approach to their preservation and continuing use. The buildings at the museum were all threatened with destruction and, as it was not possible to find a way to preserve them at their original sites, they were carefully dismantled, conserved and rebuilt in their historical form at the museum.

The Market Hall dates from the 17th century and was originally built at Titchfield, Hampshire. It has a lock-up on the ground floor and the first-floor room served as the town council chamber. When the Market Hall was dismantled and re-erected at the museum, it was the second time that had happened. The building had been moved from its original location in the centre of Titchfield to another site in the town in the mid-19th century.

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City Hall is a building in Southwark, London which served as the headquarters of the Greater London Authority (GLA) between July 2002 and December 2021. It is located in the London Borough of Southwark, on the south bank of the River Thames near Tower Bridge. In June 2020, the Greater London Authority started a consultation on proposals to vacate City Hall and move to The Crystal, a GLA owned property in Newham, at the end of 2021. The decision was confirmed on 3 November 2020 and the GLA vacated City Hall on 2 December 2021. The Southwark location is ultimately owned by the government of Kuwait.[

City Hall was designed by Norman Foster and was constructed at a cost of £43 million on a site formerly occupied by wharves serving the Pool of London. It opened in July 2002, two years after the Greater London Authority was created, and was leased rather than owned by the Greater London Authority. Despite its name, City Hall is not in and does not serve a city (according to UK law), often adding to the confusion of Greater London with the City of London, which has its headquarters at Guildhall. In June 2011, Mayor Boris Johnson announced that for the duration of the London 2012 Olympic Games, the building would be called London House.

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The Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) is the city hall of Paris, France, standing on the Place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville – Esplanade de la Libération in the 4th arrondissement. The south wing was originally constructed by François I beginning in 1535 until 1551. The north wing was built by Henry IV and Louis XIII between 1605 and 1628. It was burned by the Paris Commune, along with all the city archives that it contained, during the Commune's final days in May 1871. The outside was rebuilt following the original design, but larger, between 1874 and 1882, while the inside was considerably modified. It has been the headquarters of the municipality of Paris since 1357. It serves multiple functions, housing the local government council, since 1977 the Mayor of Paris and her cabinet, and also serves as a venue for large receptions.

In 1533, King Francis I decided to endow the city with a city hall which would be worthy of Paris, then the largest city of Europe and Christendom. He appointed two architects: Italian Dominique de Cortone, nicknamed Boccador because of his red beard, and Frenchman Pierre Chambiges. The House of Pillars was torn down and Boccador, steeped in the spirit of the Renaissance, drew up the plans of a building which was at the same time tall, spacious, full of light and refined. Building work was not finished until 1628 during the reign of Louis XIII.

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The Musée d'Orsay is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It houses the largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world, by painters including Berthe Morisot, Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin, and van Gogh. Many of these works were held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume prior to the museum's opening in 1986. It is one of the largest art museums in Europe.

The museum building was originally a railway station, Gare d'Orsay, located next to the Seine river. Built on the site of the Palais d'Orsay, its central location was convenient for commuting travelers. The station was constructed for the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans and finished in time for the 1900 Exposition Universelle to the design of three architects: Lucien Magne, Émile Bénard and Victor Laloux. It was the terminus for the railways of southwestern France until 1939.

At any time about 3,000 art pieces are on display within Musée d'Orsay. Within the museum is a 1:100 scale model created by Richard Peduzzi of an aerial view of Paris Opera and surrounding area encapsulated underneath glass flooring that viewers walk on as they proceed through the museum. This installation allows the viewers to understand the city planning of Paris at the time, which has made this attraction one of the most popular within the museum.

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The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built in the late 12th to 13th century under Philip II. Remnants of the Medieval Louvre fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. Due to urban expansion, the fortress eventually lost its defensive function, and in 1546 Francis I converted it into the primary residence of the French Kings. The building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace. In 1682, Louis XIV chose the Palace of Versailles for his household, leaving the Louvre primarily as a place to display the royal collection, including, from 1692, a collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. In 1692, the building was occupied by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which in 1699 held the first of a series of salons. The Académie remained at the Louvre for 100 years. During the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to display the nation's masterpieces.

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The Louvre Pyramid (Pyramide du Louvre) is a large glass and metal structure designed by the Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei. The pyramid is in the main courtyard (Cour Napoléon) of the Louvre Palace in Paris, surrounded by three smaller pyramids. The large pyramid serves as the main entrance to the Louvre Museum. Completed in 1988 as part of the broader Grand Louvre project,[1] it has become a landmark of the city of Paris.

The construction of the pyramid triggered many years of lively aesthetic and political debate. Criticisms tended to fall into four areas:

1. the modernist style of the edifice being inconsistent with the classic French Renaissance style and history of the Louvre
2. the pyramid being an unsuitable symbol of death from ancient Egypt
3. the project being megalomaniacal folly imposed by then-President François Mitterrand
4. Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei being insufficiently familiar with French culture to be entrusted with the task of updating the treasured Parisian landmark

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