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Carlton House became a Royal residence in 1732, and the Prince of Wales, the future King George III, took possession of it in 1783. His first act was to hire Henry Holland to renovate the exterior and refurbish the interior to suit the Prince's luxurious lifestyle. In the 1780s Holland traveled to France and was influenced there by the neoclassical architects associated with the French Academy of Architecture such as J.G. Soufflot, designer of the Roman-inspired Panthéon in Paris. Following the widespread influence of neo-Palladianism, late eighteenth-century neoclassicism favored newly discovered monuments of classical antiquity over Palladian interpretations of classical architecture. From the right to left this cross section presents the portico as a porte-cochère(with the outline of a carriage sketched in ) a vestibule with a cast of the Apollo Belvedere, followed by a rectangular hall, with a low arch spanned by entablatures supported on Ionic columns, and a second hall with a gallery overlooking the grand staircase. The rounded forms of Holland's section, especially the coffered dome with an oculus, recall circular roman temples such as the Pantheon. The rich ornamentation was perhaps inspired by the discovery and subsequent excavation of Pompeii in 1748. although this design was never executed, Holland continued his work at Carlton House, which remained incomplete at the time of his death. Morna O'Neill Wilcox, Forrester, O'Neil, Sloan. The Line of Beauty: British Drawings and Watercolors of the Eighteenth Century. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2001, pg. 147 cat no. 125