The Tulip Stairs at Greenwich: London’s Most Beautiful (and Allegedly Haunted) Staircase

Here’s one for your London list that most people walk straight past without realising what they’re missing.

The Tulip Stairs at the Queen’s House in Greenwich are the first geometric self-supporting spiral staircase EVER built in Britain; they’re free to see, they photograph like an absolute dream, AND they’re the location of one of the most famous (and genuinely unexplained) ghost photographs ever taken.

All in a free museum in southeast London that most tourists skip entirely in favour of the Royal Observatory.

Their loss, honestly.

First, the building

The Queen’s House was designed by Inigo Jones and completed in 1635, making it the first wholly classical building in England.

It was originally commissioned as a residence for Anne of Denmark, Queen Consort to King James I, except Anne died in 1619, well before construction finished.

The project was paused and then resumed in 1629 as a residence for Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, who finally got to move in. As royal backstories go, it’s a good one.

Jones was heavily influenced by the 16th-century Italian architect Andrea Palladio, and the Tulip Stairs are the most striking example of that influence in the building.

Rather than a central column supporting the structure, his mason Nicholas Stone devised an ingenious solution: each step interlocks with the next, every one providing support for the one above it.

The result is a self-supporting helix that was entirely without precedent in Britain at the time.

About those “tulips”

The Tulip Stairs are not actually decorated with tulips. The ornate wrought iron balustrade features fleur-de-lis, the emblem of Henrietta Maria’s French royal family, interwoven with what appear to be stylised flowers.

Somewhere along the way, someone called them tulips, and the name stuck. The staircase has been the Tulip Stairs ever since, regardless of what’s actually on the railings.

A small but satisfying piece of architectural trivia to deploy while everyone else is just taking photos.

Now for the ghost part (stay with us)

In 1966, a retired Canadian reverend named R. W. Hardy visited the Queen’s House with his wife during a holiday in the UK. He had heard about the famous Tulip Stairs and, struck by their beauty, took a photograph.

The staircase was empty. Or so they both believed. When the film was developed, two or three shrouded figures were visible on the stairs, hands gripping the balustrade, appearing to climb toward the top. Neither the reverend nor his wife had seen anyone there.

The photograph went to Kodak. It went to paranormal investigators. It was examined by experts across multiple disciplines over the following decades. It has never been fully explained, and the Royal Museums Greenwich still acknowledges it on their own website.

The Ghost Club, a paranormal investigation bureau, was brought in to look into the matter.

They arrived in rubber-soled shoes, took careful notes, synced watches to ensure accurate recordings, and settled in for the night with a séance. Nothing conclusive came of it. The case was eventually closed with no explanation.

Then in 2002, an unnamed gallery assistant reported seeing a figure gliding across one of the balconies, dressed in an old-fashioned white-grey dress, before passing through a wall. Which raises the question of what exactly the Ghost Club was looking for, and whether they were looking in the right place.

For everything else worth doing while you’re in the area, our fun things to do in Greenwich guide has it all covered.