page_title: Het Loo Palace
section_title: Garden
hierarchical_section_title: Het Loo Palace / Garden
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Paleis Het Loo; Transversale as door baroktuin achterzijde This is an image of rijksmonument number 8165
context_page_description: Het Loo Palace is a palace in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, built by the House of Orange-Nassau.
context_section_description: The private "Great Garden" is situated in the back. This Dutch Baroque garden, often mislabeled the "Versailles of Holland", actually serves to show more differences than similarities. It is still within the general Baroque formula established by André Le Nôtre: perfect symmetry, axial layout with radiating gravel walks, parterres with fountains, basins and statues.
  The garden as it appears in the engraving was designed by Le Nôtre's nephew, Claude Desgotz. Throughout his military and diplomatic career, William of Orange was the continental antagonist of Louis XIV, the commander of the forces opposed to those of absolute power and Roman Catholicism. André Le Nôtre's main axis at Versailles, continued by the canal, runs up to the horizon. Daniel Marot and Desgotz's Het Loo garden does not dominate the landscape as Louis' German imitators do, though in his idealized plan, Desgotz extends the axis. The main garden, with conservative rectangular beds instead of more elaborately shaped ones, is an enclosed space surrounded by raised walks, as a Renaissance garden might be, tucked into the woods for private enjoyment, the garden not of a king but of a stadhouder. At its far end a shaded crosswalk of trees disguised the central vista. The orange trees set out in wooden boxes and wintered in an orangery, which were a feature of all gardens, did double duty for the House of Orange-Nassau.
  Outside the garden there are a few straight scenic avenues, for following the hunt in a carriage, or purely for the vista afforded by an avenue. Few of the "green rooms" cut into the woodlands in imitation of the cabinets de verdure of Versailles that are shown in the engraving actually got executed at Het Loo.
  The patron of the Sun King's garden was Apollo. Peter the Great would opt for Samson, springing the jaws of Sweden's heraldic lion. William opted for Hercules.
  In the 18th century, William III’s Baroque garden as seen in the engraving was replaced by an English landscape garden.
  The lost gardens of Het Loo were fully restored beginning in 1970 and completed in time to celebrate the building's 1984 tercentenary. Het Loo's new brickwork, latticework and ornaments are as raw as they must have been in 1684 and will mellow with time.
caption: The palace, as seen from the gardens
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