1663 Pembroke College Chapel

At age of 31, in 1663 Christopher Wren designed Pembroke Chapel. It was a gift to the College from the architect's uncle, the Bishop of Ely, who was an ex-fellow of the College, on release in 1659 from 18 years captivity in the Tower.

Wren had only just started to involve himself with architecture though his engagement on the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford. His design for the chapel was probably based on a design in Serlio's Architettura. The hexagonal lantern was Wren's only addition to Serlio, and is a less appropriate classical motif in an otherwise simple and elegantly correct classical design. According to Pevsner, the carving of the pilaster capitals and the pediment garlands is uncommonly fine. It was Cambridge's earliest purely classical building, at a time when Christ's College Fellow's Building still looked modern. When it was consecrated in 1665, it stood alone to the South of what was then the South range of Pembroke College's Old Court.

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