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Het Loo

Paleis Het Loo
Paleis het Loo, Apeldoorn.jpg
The cour d'honneur and the palace front
Het Loo Palace is located in Gelderland
Het Loo Palace
Location in Gelderland in the Netherlands
General information
Type Palace
Architectural style Dutch Baroque
Location Apeldoorn, Netherlands
Address Koninklijk Park 1
Coordinates 52°14′03″N 5°56′45″E / 52.234167°N 5.945833°E / 52.234167; 5.945833Coordinates: 52°14′03″N 5°56′45″E / 52.234167°N 5.945833°E / 52.234167; 5.945833
Construction started 1684
Completed 1686
Renovated 1976–1982
Client William III of England
Mary II of England
Owner Dutch state
Technical details
Floor area 36,042 m²
Design and construction
Architect Jacob Roman
Johan van Swieten
Daniel Marot

Het Loo Palace (Dutch: Paleis Het Loo, IPA: [pɑˈlɛi̯s ɦɛt ˈloː], meaning "The Woods Palace") is a palace in Apeldoorn, Netherlands. The symmetrical Dutch Baroque building was designed by Jacob Roman and Johan van Swieten and was built between 1684 and 1686 for stadtholder-king William III and Mary II of England. The garden was designed by Claude Desgotz.

The palace was a residence of the House of Orange-Nassau from the 17th century until the death of Queen Wilhelmina in 1962. The building was renovated between 1976 and 1982. Since 1984, the palace is a state museum open for the general public, showing interiors with original furniture, objects and paintings of the House of Orange-Nassau.

The building is a rijksmonument and is among the Top 100 Dutch heritage sites.

In 2013, the museum had 410,000 visitors, which makes it the 8th most visited museum in the Netherlands.

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 court and garden") as Versailles and its imitators, and even as fine Parisian private houses are. The dry paved and gravelled court, lightly screened from the road by a wrought-iron grill, is domesticated by a traditional plat of box-bordered green, the homey touch of a cross in a circle you'd find in a bougeois 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 regular street.


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