The Palace of Oranjewoud, also referred to as Lustslot Oranjewoud (Pleasure Palace Oranjewoud), was a palace formerly situated in the village of Oranjewoud, within the municipality of Heerenveen, in the province of Friesland, the Netherlands. Following its demolition, a new manor house was erected on the site of the former foundations in 1829, subsequently known as Landgoed Oranjewoud (the Oranjewoud Estate).
The palace served principally as a summer residence for the Frisian branch of the House of Orange-Nassau, including successive Princes of Orange. The House of Orange held several properties within the village, a number of which survive to the present day, as do most of the woodlands and parks established during this period. The presence of the Oranges attracted numerous other noble houses to the area. The members of the House of Orange who resided at Oranjewoud constitute the direct ancestral line of the reigning monarch, King Willem-Alexander.
Museum Heerenveen has a model showing how the palace looked in its heyday.
History
Origins of the House of Orange's Presence at Oranjewoud
From 1587 onward, the Frisian branch of the House of Nassau furnished the stadtholders of Friesland. In 1702, following the extinction of the Holland branch upon the death of stadtholder-king William III, this Frisian branch inherited the title of Prince of Orange. Since 1587 the Frisian Nassaus had resided at the Stadhouderlijk Hof in Leeuwarden, where the family also maintained its own burial vault in the Grote or Jacobijnerkerk.
Princess and Countess Albertine Agnes of Nassau belonged to the Holland branch of the House and was born in The Hague, the daughter of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, and Amalia van Solms; William the Silent, Prince of Orange, was her grandfather. Her mother had commissioned the construction of the Huis ten Bosch palace, which Albertine Agnes was entitled to occupy following her mother's death but ultimately declined to inhabit, disposing of the property to her cousin, stadtholder-king William III.
Albertine Agnes married her second cousin, William Frederick, Prince of Nassau-Dietz, stadtholder of Friesland and subsequently of Drenthe and Groningen, whereupon she relocated to Leeuwarden. She served as acting stadtholder on behalf of their son, Henry Casimir II, until 1675, and, pending his majority, as regent of the county of Dietz in Germany, where she commissioned the construction of a further residence, Oranienstein Palace, a property she thereafter visited infrequently. It would appear that Albertine Agnes sought a country estate within closer proximity to Leeuwarden. She was widely known as a patron of major architectural projects and a keen collector of paintings and other works of art, a reputation later reflected in the furnishing of Oranjewoud itself.
Among the earliest country estates in the area now known as Oranjewoud was Sickingastate, first documented in 1552. In the following year it was acquired by the Frisian councillor and knight Pieter van Dekema, a nobleman of pro-Spanish sympathies who had received his knighthood from the Emperor Charles V. Van Dekema subsequently transferred the estate to his father-in-law, Gerrit van Loo, under whose ownership thousands of trees were already being planted. The property remained within the family through the marriage of Van Loo's son-in-law, Allert van Sierxma, whose daughter married the young nobleman Tjalke van Sickinga; it later passed into the possession of Barent van Sevenaer. Sickingastate was situated on one of the canals of the Schoterlandse Compagnonsvaart, facilitating access even for heavy materials. The surrounding region, then known as Schoterwold or simply 't Wold, comprised peat and sandy soils supporting woodland and heath, and served as hunting terrain.
In June 1676, Albertine Agnes acquired the Sickingastate estate, already designated that year as Oranienwout, together with a tract of woodland. As members of the House of Orange were formally prohibited from holding property in Friesland in their own right, she sought and obtained the requisite permission from the States of Friesland. At this juncture several estates already existed within 't Wold, among them Pauwenburg, home successively to the Van Oenema and Van Haren families.
The estate purchased by Albertine Agnes from Barent van Sevenaer was not unfamiliar to her: from 1665, following the death of her husband William Frederick, she had already resided there with some regularity. The estate at that time comprised the country house proper, three tenant farms, and heathland, to which she subsequently added further woodland. Within a relatively short interval she undertook an expansion of the property, commissioning avenues, tree-lined walks, and baroque gardens executed after the French model.
From Country House to Palace Once the princess had acquired Oranjewoud, the requisite furnishings and household goods were transported there via the waterways connecting Leeuwarden, Grouw, and Akkrum. The estate possessed its own canal connection to the Schoterlandse Compagnonsvaart, designated the Prinsenwijk, and a turning basin, the Prinsenkom, was constructed to permit vessels arriving from Leeuwarden to manoeuvre; a boathouse housing a covered yacht was erected there at a later date. With the arrival of the household goods, work commenced on furnishing what was to become the stadtholder's summer residence.
Stadtholder Henry Casimir II, son of Albertine Agnes, undertook an expansion of the country house in 1681, adding several additional chambers. To embellish the residence, it was furnished with valuable paintings by old masters, including works by Melchior d'Hondecoeter, Peter Paul Rubens, Paulus Moreelse, Caspar Netscher, Michiel van Mierevelt, Hercules Seghers, Roelant Savery, and Gerard van Honthorst, among them portraits of Frederick Henry and Albertine Agnes.
By this period the estate comprised, in addition to the country house and its gardens, further residences, stables, barns, and an orangery housing the orange trees. Livestock was maintained alongside the horses, together with deer and roe deer, poultry and swans, fish reared in ornamental ponds, and beehives; a watermill was likewise present. Crops, vegetables, and herbs were cultivated on the estate, and meals were customarily announced by the ringing of a bell three times daily.
Following the deaths of Henry Casimir II and Albertine Agnes, ownership passed to Henry Casimir II's widow, Henriëtte Amalia of Anhalt-Dessau, whose mother was, incidentally, the sister of Albertine Agnes. Henriëtte Amalia undertook further embellishment of the existing structure; this notwithstanding, in 1701 she commissioned the French architect Daniel Marot to develop plans for an entirely new palace at Oranjewoud.
Construction of this new palace commenced in 1703, rendering it, in common with Het Loo Palace, an edifice modelled on French precedent. Daniel Marot's design was executed in the Baroque idiom. Stone was procured from Amsterdam and marble from Germany; two wings were constructed, together with the foundations for the central building, the corps de logis. By 1707 construction had progressed sufficiently for Marot to formulate a scheme for the interior decoration; the plasterwork was executed by the Swiss stuccoist Simon. Marot himself furnished the design for the palace's dome, comparable to that of the Orange Hall at Huis ten Bosch Palace, though this element was never realised owing to the prince's indebtedness, which precluded further construction of the central building. The two wings were substantially completed by approximately 1711.
The two wings were externally almost identical, with the exception that the east wing incorporated a chapel. Each wing comprised fifteen window bays to the front elevation and four to the interior side, together with a basement, a bel-étage, and a steep roof clad in blue tiles, each wing's roof carrying six chimneys and seven dormer windows. The palace was built in a restrained classicist Baroque style, its scale rather than its ornamentation conveying the standing of the stadtholder's family; each wing's bel-étage, fitted with large sash windows in the English manner, was reached by broad, high staircases. As no measured plans of the building survive, its overall dimensions can only be estimated from surviving drawings — chiefly those by Cornelis Pronk, considered the most reliable — and have been put at an overall length of somewhere between 74 and 97 metres. A drawing of the palace made by Pronk in 1754, now preserved in the Fries Museum, provides a valuable impression of its appearance during this period. The palace stood upon the Lindelaan and was accessible via a bridge or causeway. Within the court garden situated between the palace and the Lindelaan stood four long rows of trees bordered by tall hedges.
Princely Residents and Royal Visitors
The palace was successively inhabited by Albertine Agnes (1676–1696), Henriëtte Amalia of Anhalt-Dessau (1696–1726), Maria Louise of Hesse-Kassel (1726–1765), and William IV (1765–1795).
Princess and Countess Albertine Agnes of Orange-Nassau took up residence at Oranjewoud from 1676, having previously visited the estate with some frequency. By this time she was already widowed, her husband William Frederick of Nassau-Dietz having died in the course of a hunting expedition. Her children, Amalia of Nassau-Dietz and Henry Casimir II, likewise resided there regularly. The name of Amalia in particular remains closely associated with the estate, she having married Duke Johann Wilhelm III of Saxe-Eisenach at Oranjewoud on 28 September 1690, and having there given birth to their son, William Henry of Saxe-Eisenach, subsequently ruler of the principality of Saxe-Eisenach. The estate could accommodate large numbers when multiple members of the House of Orange were in residence, on which occasions a portion of the court household would likewise travel from Leeuwarden and Germany.
Albertine Agnes died at the palace on 24 May 1696. Although she had expressed a wish to be interred at Oranjewoud, she was instead laid to rest in the burial vault of the Frisian Nassaus at Leeuwarden. Her only son, Henry Casimir II, had predeceased her by several months, and the estate accordingly passed to his widow, Henriëtte Amalia of Anhalt-Dessau. The couple had by this time had nine children, the majority daughters, with a single surviving son, Johan Willem Friso of Nassau-Dietz; as he remained a minor, Henriëtte Amalia acted as his regent until 1707, successfully securing the succession to the Prince of Orange for her son after the death of the childless William III in 1702.
Johan Willem Friso maintained several rooms within the palace furnished for his particular use, and it is probable that his seven sisters — among them Maria Amalia, Sophia Hedwig, and Isabella Charlotte — were likewise frequent occupants of Oranjewoud.
Upon the death of the stadtholder-king William III in 1702, Johan Willem Friso inherited both his estate and the title of Prince of Orange. Following his mother's relocation to Dietz in Germany in 1707, the prince assumed direction of the palace's ongoing construction. Both wings of the palace were substantially completed by 1711 — the same year in which Johan Willem Friso drowned near Moerdijk, with the result that the palace was never brought to full completion. When Johan Willem Friso died so unexpectedly, Henriëtte Amalia failed to secure the regency on behalf of her infant grandson, the future William IV, the States of Friesland instead preferring her daughter-in-law Maria Louise for the role.