Apsley House

Listen for a moment. Traffic circles Hyde Park Corner on every side. Buses, taxis and bicycles pass in a constant loop. In the middle of all that noise stands a pale, honey-coloured house with tall columns and very still windows. It looks a little out of place, like a country mansion that got lost in the city. Welcome to Apsley House, home of the first Duke of Wellington, the soldier who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.

Start with the nickname. For generations, Londoners have called this building Number One, London. The reason is practical, not grand. In the old days, a toll gate stood near here on the road into the city from the west. Travellers arriving from the countryside passed through it, and this was the first substantial house they met. So the name was a kind of address and a kind of greeting. Even today, letters addressed simply to Number One, London are said to find their way here.

The house did not begin with Wellington. It was first built in the late eighteenth century for Lord Apsley, a senior lawyer, and that is where the name comes from. The architect was Robert Adam, one of the most fashionable designers of his age. Adam was known for light, elegant interiors with delicate plasterwork. The original house was built in red brick. It was smaller and plainer than the building in front of you now.

So where did the pale stone come from? That is Wellington's work. The Duke bought the house in 1817, after his brother had owned it for several years. Wellington was now the most celebrated man in Britain, and he wanted a London home that matched his position. In the 1820s, he had the house enlarged and refaced in Bath stone, a warm limestone. The columned portico at the front was added in the same period. The brick is still there, hidden under the stone like a coat under a cloak.

Now look at the windows. Here is a detail most visitors miss. In the early 1830s, Wellington opposed political reform, and he became deeply unpopular for a time. Angry crowds gathered outside and threw stones, breaking his windows. His response was very much the response of a soldier. He had iron shutters fitted. This earned him a second nickname, the Iron Duke. Many people assume the name came from the battlefield. In fact, it is partly a joke about this house.

Step inside, and the mood changes completely. The noise of the roundabout fades. You walk on polished floors under gilded ceilings. The rooms still feel lived in, because they are arranged much as the Duke knew them. This is one of the very few great London town houses where the original owner's collection remains largely in place. You are not looking at a museum built around a man. You are looking at his home.

And then, at the foot of the main staircase, comes the first real surprise. A colossal marble statue of Napoleon Bonaparte stands there, almost completely nude. It was carved by Antonio Canova, the leading Italian sculptor of his day. Canova showed Napoleon as Mars, the Roman god of war, in the role of peacemaker. Napoleon himself reportedly disliked it and had it hidden away. After his defeat, the British government bought it, and it was given to Wellington. So the Duke climbed his own stairs every day past the giant figure of his greatest enemy.

The largest room in the house is the Waterloo Gallery. Wellington added it to hold his finest paintings and to host large dinners. Look at how long it is, and how the light falls along the walls. Each year on the anniversary of the battle, the eighteenth of June, the Duke gave a banquet here for the officers who had fought with him. The room was designed for that purpose. It was a place where a victory could be remembered again and again.

The paintings carry their own extraordinary story. Many came from the Spanish royal collection. In 1813, after the Battle of Vitoria in Spain, British troops captured the baggage train of Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother, who had been placed on the Spanish throne. Rolled up inside that baggage were valuable royal paintings. Wellington offered to return them to the restored Spanish king. The king replied that the Duke should keep them, as a gift. That is why works by Spanish masters hang here, in the middle of London.

Among them is one of the best-known works in the house, The Waterseller of Seville by Diego Velázquez. Velázquez was the great court painter of seventeenth-century Spain. In this early painting, an old man hands a glass of water to a boy. Look closely at the clay jug in the foreground. The drops of water on its surface look almost real enough to touch. It is a quiet, simple scene, and it rewards a long, slow look.

In the dining room, you will find another kind of treasure. A long silver centrepiece runs down the table, a gift from Portugal in thanks for Wellington's campaigns there. Around the house, there are also porcelain services, swords, batons and medals, many of them gifts from the rulers of Europe. Taken together, they show how the continent saw this man after Waterloo. He was not only a general. For a time, he was one of the most powerful figures in Europe.

Here is the second surprise. The house belongs to the nation, but the family never fully left. In 1947, a later Duke of Wellington gave the house and much of its collection to the country. Part of the building was kept for the family's own use, and the Dukes of Wellington still have an apartment here. Today, the public rooms are cared for by English Heritage, the charity that looks after many historic sites in England. So as you walk through, you are sharing the house with its family, just as earlier visitors did.

When you step back outside, take a moment before you cross the road. Opposite the house stands the great Wellington Arch, and nearby is a bronze statue of the Duke on horseback, facing his old front door. Just inside Hyde Park, a huge statue of the Greek hero Achilles was raised in his honour, cast from melted French cannon. The whole corner is a kind of open-air memorial to one man.

Now listen again. The buses are still circling. The taxis are still hurrying past. Most of the people around you will not look up at these tall windows. But you know what sits behind them. A marble Napoleon at the foot of the stairs. A Spanish king's paintings on the walls. And iron shutters, closed once against a crowd. As you walk away, glance back at Number One, London... and see how quietly it holds its ground.