Royal Palace Amsterdam

The Royal Palace stands on the Dam, the central square of Amsterdam, and it is one of the most imposing buildings in the Netherlands. It began as a town hall. In the middle of the seventeenth century, when Amsterdam was at the height of its wealth as the leading trading city in Europe, the city council decided that the old town hall was not grand enough, and it commissioned the architect Jacob van Campen to build a new one. Work began in 1648, the year the Peace of Westphalia ended the Eighty Years' War with Spain, and the building was opened in the mid-1660s. It was meant to proclaim the power and the pride of the city, and it did so in stone, marble and bronze.

The building is a huge classical block, faced with pale sandstone and crowned by a cupola. It stands on a foundation of more than thirteen thousand wooden piles driven into the soft ground, a fact that is often quoted to illustrate the scale of the ambition, and it is the reason the building has remained standing for centuries on a site that is essentially marshland. Sculptures on the pediments, by the artist Artus Quellinus and his workshop, show allegories of the city's trade, justice and its place in the world. The interior was decorated by some of the leading painters of the period, including pupils of Rembrandt, with large paintings on themes from Roman history that served as models of civic virtue.

The most striking room is the Citizens' Hall, a vast marble hall that rises the full height of the building, with the floor inlaid with maps of the eastern and western hemispheres and the walls covered with sculpture. It was the public centre of the town hall. Other rooms include the Council Chamber, the courtroom where sentences were pronounced, known as the Vierschaar, and the galleries.

In 1808 the building became a palace, when Louis Napoleon, whom his brother Napoleon had installed as king of Holland, took it as his residence, and he had much of the furniture of the Empire style that is still on display installed. The palace later passed to the Dutch royal house, and today it is used by the king for state occasions and receptions, such as official visits, though the monarch lives elsewhere. Because of this, the palace is closed at times, and opening should be checked before going. An audio guide accompanies the visit.

The palace suits history and architecture lovers, and a visit takes about an hour and a half. It stands beside the Nieuwe Kerk and the Madame Tussauds museum on the square, and the canal ring is a short walk away.