To download the application form and the conditions for application, click here.

In recent years, the Royal Palace underwent a thorough restoration and renovation. In the summer of 2009, the Palace reopened to the public. Since then, more rooms are open to the public and the interior and furniture can be seen in renewed glory. Meanwhile, the Dutch Government Building Agency started with the restoration of the exterior. Capitals were replaced, rabbets removed, stones cleaned, the tympanum with it’s gilded ornaments restored. After two and a half years the restoration of the exterior is finished, the fences are removed, the updated facade shows itself.

The documentary follows the craftsmen, architects and experts of the Government Building Agency. In the documentary we visit the quarry in Germany where new stones are cut and we see how the documentalist maps the 25,000 sandstone blocks. A unique glimpse into a special project.

The documentary was made by Bobcat Media and was repeated on Dutch television on Friday, January 20, 2012.

To watch the documentary on internet (in Dutch), click here.

Attendees of the New Year’s Reception on Tuesday, January 17 were Dutch authorities, representatives of governmental and social institutions and many other sectors of Dutch society.

On Wednesday, January 18 H.M. the Queen welcomed members of the diplomatic corps, presidents and judges of international courts and heads of international organizations based in the Netherlands.

Mr. Gerlach was the 200.000th visitor. On Tuesday December 27, 2011, he and his wife and mr. and mrs. Nuyens were welcomed by Marianna van der Zwaag, head presentations. Mr. Gerlach got a bouquet of flowers and a voucher entitling the holder to a special tour with family and friends, including an exclusive visit to the cells below the Palace.

In the summer of 2009, the Palace was re-opened to the public, after comprehensive restoration and renovation of the interior. The number of visitors increased, with a record in 2011. In 2012, the Royal Palace Amsterdam will be open to the public most of the year, unless an official event takes place.

For an overview of the opening hours, click here.

Fore more information about the New Year’s Receptions, click here.

The Royal Palace Amsterdam supports 3FM Serious Request and allowed you to offer a special tour of the Palace. During the tour your group will visit the seventeenth-century cells. These cells are not open to visitors during a regular tour. Up to Saturday, December 24, 14.57 hr, you could offer on this special tour through the auction site of 3FM Serious Request. The final bid was 910,00 euros. This amount will be donated to 3FM Serious Request.

In cooperation with the Red Cross, 3FM Serious Request focuses every year on a silent catastrophe. In the week before Christmas, three DJs from 3FM Radio lock themselves up six days in a glass studio, this year in the city Leiden. They don’t eat anything and do 24 hours a day live radio and television. The public can pay to request songs and supporters will be well informed about the action.

For more information about 3FM Serious Request, click here.

During Royal events the floor of the Citizen’s Hall is covered with a carpet to protect the valuable marble maps. With the years the old carpet needed to be replaced. In the ‘90s the Dutch artist Ria van Eyk was commissioned to design a new carpet which suited the designated hall, the floor and the history of the Royal Palace.

Never before had a carpet of such proportions been woven in the Netherlands: it was to measure almost six hundred square metres (31.84 metres by 17.75 metres). The more than thousand colours Van Eyk used in her countless sketches and designs were reduced to eight basic colours and added with black, white and grey. The design itself, a view on the heavens, was based on a photograph of the Milky Way chosen by Van Eyk. In the centre of the carpet we find the Hale-Bopp comet, which was visible during eighteen months in 1997. Due to all the 21st-century technologies the knowledge and the image of the universe changed considerably in comparison to the 17th-century marble starry sky.

The carpet is on show from December 20, 2011 to January 8, 2012, during the opening hours of the Royal Palace Amsterdam.

For an overview of the opening hours, click here.

Chimurenga & Ntone Edjabe South Africa/Cameroon Chimurenga is an innovative, Pan African, cultural platform based in South Africa. It was founded by Ntone Edjabe (1970, Douala, Cameroon), a writer and DJ, who attended the University of Lagos but was ‘educated’ by Nigerian musician and radical thinker Fela Kuti. In 2002 he launched the Chimurenga magazine to stimulate original perspectives on the contemporary African experience. It offers fresh interpretations, analyses, poetry, experimental texts and visual materials by leading creative thinkers and radical practitioners in a multiplicity of disciplines from Africa and elsewhere.

The Prince Claus Awards are presented annually to individuals, groups and organisations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean for their outstanding achievements in the field of culture and development and the positive effect of their work on their direct environment and on the wider cultural or social field.

For more information, clich here.

Royal Palace Amsterdam seen from Dam Square

Tympanum Royal Palace Amsterdam seen from Dam Square

Citizens' Hall, Royal Palace Amsterdam

Citizens' Hall, Royal Palace Amsterdam

Floor Citizens' Hall, Royal Palace Amsterdam

Tribunal, Royal Palace Amsterdam

City Council Chamber, Royal Palace Amsterdam

Orphans Administration Office, Royal Palace Amsterdam

Burgomasters' Council Room, Royal Palace Amsterdam

Artus Quellinus, Apollo

Ferdinand Bol, Moses decends from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments

Govaert Flinck, The incorruptible Consul Marcus Curius Dentatus