Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Palace of Whitehall burned down on the 4th of January 1698. A servant hanging wet linen to dry near a charcoal brazier started a fire that raged for 15 hours and destroyed most of the remaining residential and government buildings.
Cardinal Thomas Wolsey owned the property before it became the Palace of Whitehall. He purchased the land known as York Place in the 13th century and transformed it into a magnificent house that rivaled Lambeth Palace.
The Banqueting House is the only integral building of the Palace of Whitehall that still stands today. It was built to a design by Inigo Jones in 1622 and survived the fire of 1698.
The Palace of Whitehall had more than 1,500 rooms before it was destroyed. By 1650, it had become the largest complex of secular buildings in England with an irregular layout of many different sizes and architectural styles.
Workers discovered the Wine Cellar of the Palace of Whitehall in 1938 during the redevelopment of the east side of the site. The cellar was encased in steel and concrete and relocated to the west and nearly deeper in 1949 when construction resumed after the Second World War.