Het Loo Palace

Paleis Het Loo
The cour d'honneur and the palace front
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.