Greenwich Hospital, “the most stately procession of buildings we possess”, in the words of Sir Charles Reilly, cannot have looked better in a century and a half. Yet only 13 years ago the Prime Minister John Major went into deep shock as Messrs Knight Frank & Rutley trumpeted its sale as part of their 100th birthday celebrations. The redoubtable Admiral of the Fleet Lord Lewin led the charge. The Government was accused in Parliament of selling the nation’s family silver. Pessimists prophesied that the great buildings by Wren, Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor would be covered in graffiti if scruffy students of the University of Greenwich were allowed in.

I was strongly in favour of a collegiate body taking over from the Royal Naval College, which had occupied Greenwich Hospital for sailors since 1873. Now, ten years after the university has moved in, the gates are open from 8am to 6pm, with free admission to Sir James Thornhill’s magnificent Painted Hall. The hall attracts 300,000 visitors a year and nearly £40 million has been spent on putting these great buildings into first-class order.

Ragged hedges planted as a security screen have been removed, disused tennis courts and unsightedly car parks have been replaced by grand rectangular lawns following the Philip Hardwick layout of 1860. The west walk has been reinstated, aligned on the obelisk to the French Lieutenant Joseph Bellot who lost his life searching for the Franklin expedition in the North-West Passage. Pollarding of plane trees and removal of trees nearer buildings has opened up glorious perspectives of all the grand but forgotten external frontages by Hawksmoor.

Roads have been resurfaced. You can step up from the river walk into the central grand vista. Even better, you can promenade along Wren’s glorious colonnades and inspect the remarkable Coade stone pediment of the Death of Nelson designed by Benjamin West. There are no ugly signs interfering with photography.

Thanks are due not just to the University of Greenwich but also to the Greenwich Foundation, which holds the head lease from the Ministry of Defence, chaired first by Sir Angus Stirling and now by Francis Plowden. Their number twos have been equally important. First Francis Carnwath, who played a key role in the creation of Tate Modern and brought Trinity College of Music to the King Charles Block at Greenwich. On summer days glorious music spills out of the great sash windows. Trinity College not only provides music in the Greenwich chapel but works with the Laban Dance Centre at Deptford and has stepped in to save the Blackheath concert halls.

Carnwath’s successor, Duncan Wilson, who moved here from Somerset House, is adding more flourishes. These include a 55 metre-high observation wheel opening on June 21 for the summer season. He says: “From the top you will see the heights of Highgate and Hampstead, the Lea Valley, and over the crest of Greenwich Hill to Blackheath with the spire of St Mary’s on the grand axis.” Next year there will be a £5.7 million education centre for the entire Greenwich World Heritage site with architects’ models, armour from the Royal Armouries and a reconstruction of the east end of Henry VIII’s Royal Chapel and its tiled floor discovered in 2005. Next in line is a micro-brewery, sited on the rediscovered brewhouse, for the pensioners.

A visit to Greenwich Hospital now includes quite a substantial tour — not just the Painted Hall and the Chapel but the Ripley tunnel with its forest of columns. At one end you can take lunch in the restaurant run by Leith’s, which does the catering for events in the Painted Hall. At the other the student café is equally smart. The regular guided tours usually take in the Nelson Room, the Admiral’s House, the Skittle Alley and the Jacobean undercroft.

The 1780s chapel interior now looks more ravishing than ever with plasterwork by John Papworth, which is as crisp as Wedgwood. James “Athenian” Stuart’s resplendent gold altar will stand on a beautiful marble key pattern recently revealed beneath naval blue carpet.

Five thousand students work here every day in term. Much of the time they are unseen — hard at work indoors at seminars and computer screens, or in the library which the university has commendably installed in Stuart’s near-derelict Dreadnought building. I embarked on a tour of the grand baroque student blocks in some trepidation, wondering whether the remarkable “cabins”, panelled fronts surmounted by glazed lunettes, would have survived the sleek modern makeover. In the Queen Anne block the staircases remain with the names of the wards over the doors in Latin letters (23 men in each) transformed into classrooms. Broad corridors were arranged with tables pleasantly set by windows where students congregate to work on projects. The cabins indeed survived on all three floors of the Queen Mary block.

After ten years Greenwich can be commended as an outstanding combination of free public access with the Painted Hall, Admiral’s House and undercrofts earning much of their keep through regular events. It should be the model for other imposing colleges and hospitals which the Government is trying to sell to the highest bidder while all the time allowing them to fall into pathetic decay.

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