A few days ago we visited "Paleis het Loo" in Apeldoorn, The Netherlands.
This palace was a residence of the Dutch royal family until 1975. In 1984 it was turned a museum and opened for public. The palace is owned by the State of The Netherlands.
Stadtholder Willem III; great grandson of Willem van Oranje (William the Silent) and Princess Mary
bought this castle in 1684. It was mainly ment as a place to stay when Willem III wanted to go hunting in the nearby forests.
After Stadtholder Willem III became king of England he expanded the palace in 1691 with four
pavilions. The palace was the summer residence of the Dutch stadtholders and kings from 1686 tot 1975.
We've visited the museum a few days ago there are different tours that lead through some of the numerous rooms. The whole palace breathes history. You can really imagine how the royals must have lived here. The rooms are brought back into their original state with all the art and furniture.
The room above is the bedroom of Willem III. He was the King in The Netherlands between 1849 and 1890. He married his niece prinses Sophie van Württemberg and had three sons which all died before their father.
After his wife also died he married the German prinses Emma zu Waldeck und Pyrmont. They had a daughter Wilhelmina; the great grandmother of our current king Willem-Alexander.
She became Queen of the Netherlands at the age of 10 (under supervision of her mother).
The picture above shows the office of queen Wilhelmina. It's bizarre to think how she rules a complete country from this desk.
There was a complete audio guide through the palace telling all details of the rooms that we visited. I'm not going any further into detail on those stories.
If you like you can read some of them on the website of the museum: https://paleishetloo.nl/en/stories
I'll rather let the photos speak for themselves...
It's funny to see the many different styles in the rooms. Most of them are heavily decorated and I must say most of them are quite dark too.
One of the large hallways has beautiful painted ceiling and walls. It must have been quite a job to create this.
After the tour we went all the way to the top of the palace. It was quite a climb, but it was certainly worth it.
The view from the rooftop of the palace into the giant gardens is really amazing. The gardens go all the way to the back where a fountain squirts water 13 meters up into the sky.
We ended our visit with a little walk in these beautiful palace garden. Everything seems perfectly built and everything is decorated with very much detail.
As a Dutchman I really enjoyed visiting this museum and I've learned quite some new things about the history of our own country and the Royal family.
