Static HTML page in ASP.NET MVC that does not use Layout

By default, all views will use the layout from ~/Views/Shared as it is specified in the _Viewstart.cshtml file. Every time a view is executed, the code inside the _Viewstart.cshtml will be executed which sets the layout for the view.

If you do not want to execute/include the layout for a specific view, you can explicitly set layout as null on a view. Add the below code to the view.

@{
    Layout = null;
}

Keep in mind that, even though it is static html in your cshtml file, user will not/should not directly access this view (like a normal html page/htm page). It has to be routed via an action method which returns this cshtml view.

Another option is to use the PartialView method instead of View method. When using the PartialView method to render a view, the framework do not run _ViewStart.cshtml, hence you get the same result.

public ActionResult About()
{
   return PartialView();
}

PartialView is really handy when you want to render the markup for parts of your page (Ex : content of for a modal dialog etc)