Napoleon’s brother, Louis Napoleon, who had become the king of Holland two years before, decided to make the Town Hall his residence. Finding himself in an impoverished country, the twenty-seven-year-old Louis was moved with compassion. To his brother’s fury, he turned a blind eye to the trade between Holland and France’s archrival England, and so obstructed Napoleon’s efforts to isolate England economically from the rest of Europe.

The entire administration was moved out of the building. However, given the poor state of the country’s economy, it seemed wiser not to relocate the Exchange Bank. But, a palace with an Exchange Bank on its premises was certainly something out of the ordinary.

The lavish interior and furnishings give us some idea of how the building was transformed from what was essentially an office complex into a palace in the French Empire style. A reformist at heart, Louis tried to revive the decaying city. He promptly took measures to deal with the appalling state of the drinking water supply, the silted-up harbour, the polluted canals, and the practice of burying the dead within the city. The ancient Weighing House in the centre of Dam Square lacked the prestige that had saved the Exchange Bank, and, deaf to the protest of the populace, Louis insisted that it be demolished.

But Napoleon’s patience soon wore thin. Louis was forced to leave the country with undignified haste, only to spend the rest of his life reminiscing about his brief spell as the king of Holland. After Paris and Rome, Amsterdam had been the third capital of the Napoleonic Empire. And for a fleeting moment in its history the Town Hall had served as the third Imperial Palace in the declining years of the Empire. Almost the entire collection of costly furniture dating from that time was left behind. It is one of the best-preserved and most complete collections of its kind.