Dutch royal palace reopens after five-year-long underground project

Typically known as the “Versailles of the North”, the Dutch royal palace of Het Bathroom has been radically reworked after a five-year-long, €171m renovation, together with an “invisible” underground extension of round 5,000 sq. m.

The palace was in-built 1686 as a royal looking lodge for King William III and Queen Mary on the outskirts of the town of Apeldoorn within the coronary heart of the Netherlands. It remained a summer season retreat for the Home of Orange nicely into the twentieth century. Queen Wilhelmina stayed there after the Second World Battle till her dying in 1962.

Since 1984, Paleis Het Bathroom has been open to the general public as an impartial nationwide museum, although the royal household have nonetheless used it on occasion for official ceremonies. The museum goals to immerse guests within the historical past of the royal home and its intensive artwork collections. The palace’s treasures embrace a grand staircase and genuine interval rooms full of wall work, tapestries and numerous artefacts that replicate on Dutch historical past.

Asbestos strip-out

By 2018, the Seventeenth-century constructing was in want of a radical renovation. Most pressingly, they wanted to strip out round 4,300 sq. m of asbestos, modernise the customer services and replace virtually the entire palace’s technical methods.

Museum leaders seized the chance to enlarge the complicated with a brand new foremost entrance and more room for non permanent exhibitions. However that they had one vital situation for potential architects of the redesign: the brand new area must be located totally underground and out of sight, beneath the huge courtyard in entrance of the palace.

5 Dutch architectural companies have been shortlisted for the challenge from a public tender. From amongst them, the Rotterdam-based KAAN Architecten emerged victorious. They received their spurs in 2007 with the spectacular transformation of a well-known monumental constructing in Amsterdam into the Metropolis Archives and, extra lately, the minimalist makeover of the Royal Museum of Fantastic Arts in Antwerp, which was accomplished in 2022.

Dikkie Scipio, the challenge chief, says KAAN Architecten seemed exhausting for an architectural resolution that may not detract in any means from the splendour of the palace. She describes the idea as an “invisible intervention”.

Michel van Maarseveen, the director of Het Bathroom, was delighted with the architectural agency’s proposal. “KAAN Architecten offered a challenge which coincided precisely with our needs whereas additionally respecting the historic palace complicated in each regard,” he says. “The underground extension has an aura that matches the constructing.”

Het Bathroom’s historic forecourt beforehand consisted of 4 giant parterres (decorative gardens) which shaped an oval and have been flanked by the facet wings of the palace. KAAN’s challenge eliminated the parterres, making means for an extension a number of metres under the floor. The grassy lawns have been changed by expanses of glass that are roughly the identical measurement. They’re lined with pure stone edging which permit daylight to penetrate freely into the newly-created areas beneath. The palace itself is mirrored within the glass and the 4cm layer of water that now covers it, hinting on the fountains and waterworks for which Het Bathroom is known.

Nearer to the palace, the flight of steps in entrance of the corps de logis (the primary central block of the palace) has been refurbished by eradicating after which rigorously changing every stone.

Portals to the underworld

One other architectural problem was offering entrances to the brand new underground reception corridor, often known as the Grand Lobby, which didn’t disrupt the prospect of the open sq. in entrance of the palace. Scipio solved this by putting them on the ends of the outer east and west wings of the palace, in new nook pavilions which take the type of giant lanterns. After coming into by way of one of many lantern buildings, guests converge in a large lateral hall earlier than turning into the Grand Lobby, the form of which is impressed by the unique plan of the corps de logis, now many occasions enlarged.

From this marble-clad area there can be entry to the palace and renovated east wing in addition to the west wing, which now includes a “Junior Palace” for youthful guests. The Grand Lobby accommodates reception desks, a museum store and eating places, with room for non permanent exhibitions past. This basic reshaping of Het Bathroom has been pushed principally by new concepts about museum show.

Restored to its former glory

The substantial programme of works started early in 2018. Consultants gathered from far and large to revive the palace to its former glory: the partitions have been rehung, ceiling work restored, Seventeenth-century flooring dropped at gentle, numerous tapestries repaired if not truly rewoven, chandeliers reassembled, and numerous rooms reordered to organize them for the show of the big royal artwork assortment.

For years the primary part of Het Bathroom was inaccessible, although the stables and the park remained open to the general public. The palace lastly reopened its doorways in 2022, reaffirming its function as one of many 4 most vital Dutch artwork collections.

The east wing has been fully restored and consists of a big exhibition on the historical past of the Dutch royal home from William III and Mary right down to Queen Wilhelmina. The brand new exhibition was designed by the Dutch agency Kossmanndejong (KDJ), whereas the primary traces of the restoration work have been entrusted to a different Dutch firm, Van Hoogevest Architecten, in collaboration with Museum Het Bathroom. All this was accomplished prematurely of the ultimate stage of the challenge, KAAN Architecten’s extension, which opened on 22 April.

Scipio insists that no reference is meant to I.M. Pei’s well-known glass pyramid entrance within the central courtyard of the Louvre in Paris. “The circumstances on the Louvre are fully completely different,” she says. “It’s within the coronary heart of a metropolis and there are not any waterworks concerned.”