Restored and Regretted: A History of Staging Authenticity at the Dutch Palace Het Loo

Abstract

With the coronation of King-Stadtholder William of Orange III and Mary II of England in 1689, palace Het Loo became the seat of the first kingly ruler the Dutch had seen in a century. Its physical biography demonstrates this symbolic weight and the dialogue between its presentation and reception since. In the early nineteenth century, its resident king Louis Bonaparte greatly altered both the house and the garden of Het Loo. In the 1970s, it was decided to recreate the seventeenth-century palace, despite fierce debates, which even reached the Dutch Parliament. Both supporters and opponents of the far-reaching renovation plans argued that the authenticity of the site was at stake. Since then, several other restoration programs have been carried out, a very extensive one is currently underway. This article takes the restorations of Het Loo in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in light of its presentation history as its subject and case, discussing how authenticity at palace museum Het Loo is defined, contested, neglected, and defended.