Het Loo Palace

Coordinates: 52°14′03″N 5°56′45″E / 52.234167°N 5.945833°E / 52.234167; 5.945833
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Paleis Het Loo
Mary II of England
OwnerDutch state
Technical details
Floor area36,042 m2 (387,950 sq ft)
Design and construction
Architect(s)Jacob Roman
Johan van Swieten
Daniel Marot

Het Loo Palace (Dutch: Paleis Het Loo [paːˈlɛis ɦɛt ˈloː], meaning "The Lea") is a palace in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, built by the House of Orange-Nassau.

History

The

Claude Desgotz
.

Het Loo and its gardens, in a late-17th-century engraving

After the elder

Huis ten Bosch Palace near The Hague. His widow later bought back several of the older properties in and around The Hague from Frederick William I of Prussia
in 1732.

Queen Mary's
bedroom

The palace then remained a summer-residence of the House of Orange-Nassau until the death of Queen

Queen Juliana, never lived there, but her younger daughter, Princess Margriet
, lived in the right wing until 1975.

The building was renovated between 1976 and 1982. Since 1984, the palace has been a state museum open to the general public, showing interiors with original furniture, objects and paintings of the House of Orange-Nassau. It also houses a library devoted to the House of Orange-Nassau and the Museum van de Kanselarij der Nederlandse Orden (Museum of the Netherlands Orders of Knighthood's Chancellery) with books and other material concerning decorations and medals. The building is a rijksmonument and is among the Top 100 Dutch heritage sites.

Architecture

Photograph of the gardens, restored according to Desgotz's design.

The Dutch Baroque architecture of Het Loo takes pains to minimize the grand stretch of its construction, so emphatic at Versailles, and present itself as just a fine gentleman's residence. Het Loo is not a palace but, as the title of its engraved portrait (illustration, below) states, a "Lust-hof" (a retreat, or "pleasure house"). Nevertheless, it is situated entre cour et jardin ("between courtyard and garden") as Versailles and its imitators, and even as fine Parisian private houses are. The dry paved and gravelled courtyard, lightly screened from the road by a wrought-iron grille, is domesticated by a traditional plat of box-bordered green, the homely touch of a cross in a circle one might find in a bourgeois garden. The volumes of the palace are rhythmically broken in their massing. They work down symmetrically, expressing the subordinate roles of their use and occupants, and the final outbuildings in Marot's plan extend along the public thoroughfare, like a well-made and delightfully ordinary street.

In 2016, an international public competition was held concerning the renovation and extension of the house and the main courtyard. KAAN Architecten’s winning proposal, which opens to the public in April 2023, adds over 5000 square meters of new facilities and amenities, all placed underground and within the existing wings.[1] The grass and gravel courtyard has been replaced with a large central fountain and skylight to a large ‘Grand Foyer’ where visitors can access the main house from new grand staircases as well as new temporary exhibit galleries.

Garden

The private "Great Garden" is situated behind the house. This Dutch

André le Nôtre: perfect symmetry, axial layout radiating gravel walks, parterres
with fountains, basins and statues.

The palace, seen from the gardens.

The garden as it appears in the engraving was designed by Le Nôtre's nephew,

stadhouder. At its far end a shaded crosswalk of trees disguised the central vista. The orange trees set out in wooden boxes and wintered in an orangery
, which were a feature of all gardens, did double duty for the House of Orange-Nassau.

Abduction of a Sabine woman by Albert Xavery

Outside the garden there are a few straight scenic avenues, for following the hunt in a carriage, or purely for the vista afforded by an avenue. Few of the "green rooms" cut into the woodlands in imitation of the cabinets de verdure of Versailles that are shown in the engraving were ever actually executed at Het Loo.

The patron of the Sun King's garden was

Peter the Great would opt for Samson, springing the jaws of Sweden's heraldic lion. William opted for Hercules
.

In the 18th century, William IIIs Baroque garden as seen in the engraving was replaced by an English landscape garden.

The lost gardens of Het Loo were fully restored beginning in 1970 and completed in time to celebrate the building's 1984 tercentenary. Het Loo's new brickwork, latticework and ornaments are as raw as they must have been in 1684 and will mellow with time.

Het Loo House

Het Loo House was built in the palace grounds in 1975, as a home for Princess Margriet and Mr Pieter van Vollenhoven. It is largely single-storey and in a modern style of its time.

Visitors

The museum had 249,435 visitors in 2012 and 410,000 visitors in 2013. It was the 8th most visited museum in the Netherlands in 2013.[3]

Gallery

  • Dinner Room
    Dinner Room
  • The new diningroom
    The new diningroom
  • The Main Stair
    The Main Stair
  • The Backside of the palace
    The Backside of the palace

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Paleis Het Loo".
  2. ^ Two proposals by Desgotz for the Great Garden, one substantially as it appears in the engraving, in the National Museum, Stockholm, are illustrated by Runar Strandberg, "The French formal garden after Le Nostre", in The French Formal Garden, Elizabeth B. MacDougall and F. Hamilton Hazlehurst, editors, 1974, (Dumbarton Oaks) figs 15 (substantially as executed) and 16.
  3. ^ van Lent, Daan; van Os, Pieter (27 December 2013). "Musea doen het goed: aantal bezoekers in 2013 fors gestegen" [Museums doing well: number of visitors rose sharply in 2013]. NRC Handelsblad (in Dutch). Retrieved 10 July 2014.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Het Loo Palace.
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