In medieval London, the most desirable address for a noble was not within the city walls but along the Strand, the great ceremonial road between the City and Westminster. A house on the Strand could have a Thames water frontage, the highway of choice for travel and trade, and it was far enough from the city to escape the stink, the smoke, the constant fire risk, and the social tumult downstream and downwind to the east. In 1246, King Henry III granted a parcel of this prime ground to Peter, Count of Savoy, who was the uncle of his queen, Eleanor of Provence. Peter, made Feudal Baron of the Honour of Richmond, built a palace on the site. When he died in 1268, he willed the property to the monks of the Great St Bernard Hospice high in the Swiss Alps, who promptly sold it back to Queen Eleanor for three hundred marks.

In 1285, Eleanor passed the Savoy to her second son, Edmund, Earl of Lancaster. His descendants, the Dukes of Lancaster, lived there throughout the next century. By the fourteenth century, when the Strand had been paved as far as the Savoy itself, the palace belonged to John of Gaunt, a younger son of Edward III who had inherited the Lancaster title and lands through marriage. Gaunt was the nation's power broker, second only to the king in wealth and influence. The Savoy was his London base, magnificent enough to be famous across England for its art collection and ornaments. Geoffrey Chaucer began writing The Canterbury Tales while working at the Savoy Palace as a clerk to Gaunt's household. The opening lines of one of the foundation texts of English literature were drafted in a building that no longer exists, on a site now occupied by a hotel and a theatre.

King John II of France had been captured at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356 and held in England as a hostage for ransom. His captivity was described as honourable, which meant comfortable. He kept his court, his servants, his finances, and his dignity. He was treated as a king, not a prisoner. In 1364, after a brief release that ended when his designated substitute hostage escaped, John II returned voluntarily to England to honour the terms of the treaty. He died at the Savoy after an illness, in a noble bed in a noble palace, technically still a prisoner. Around the palace itself the law operated differently: a special jurisdiction called the Liberty of the Savoy, separate from the rest of the county of Middlesex, where Gaunt's officers held authority. This medieval enclave outlived the palace by centuries.

John of Gaunt was not a popular man in London. He had supported the religious reformer John Wycliffe at a time when reformers were heretics. He had tried to replace the elected Lord Mayor with a royally appointed captain. London rioters attacked his palace once already, in 1377, before doing it properly in 1381. The trigger that summer was the poll tax, which fell hardest on the poorest. Rural rebels marched on London under Wat Tyler and Jack Straw. They believed Gaunt had introduced the tax, and they came for his house. The systematic demolition of the Savoy was meant as political theatre as much as destruction. Tapestries burned. The jewel collection was pounded into dust. What could not be ruined went into the Thames. The palace was never rebuilt. The site lay derelict for over a century.

Henry VII founded the Savoy Hospital here for the poor and needy, endowed in his will. His son Henry VIII formally established it as a body corporate in 1512. The hospital ran fitfully for two centuries, suppressed by Edward VI in 1553 and refounded by Mary three years later. By the late seventeenth century, nobility had moved out and tradespeople had moved in: glove-makers, printers, leather-sellers. In 1695 Christopher Wren built a military prison on part of the site. By the eighteenth century the complex served as barracks, and in 1776 most of it burned. Sir William Chambers drew up plans for a vast new Foot Guards barracks accommodating three thousand men, but the scheme was finally dropped in 1804. Between 1816 and 1820, almost everything remaining was demolished to make way for the approach road to the new Waterloo Bridge. Only the Savoy Chapel survives. The names persist: Savoy Hotel, Savoy Theatre, Savoy Street. Of the medieval palace itself, nothing visible remains.