The Palace of Louis Napoleon

The first king of the Netherlands was a Frenchman, and he lived here.

Louis Napoleon, younger brother of the emperor, arrived in 1806 as king of Holland. He started in The Hague, but his eldest son died suddenly and he himself suffered constantly from rheumatism. He wanted out, and he chose Utrecht.

What followed was remarkably quiet. From the summer of 1807 houses were bought up here in secret, on the Drift, the Wittevrouwenstraat and the Keizerstraat, without anyone knowing what for. The architect Zocher senior melted them into a single palace. Work began in August and it was finished by January 1808.

The main entrance was not on the Drift but at the back, through a large gate on the Wittevrouwenstraat. The bedrooms of the king and queen Hortense lay around the small inner courtyard that is still there.

He stayed from late October until April. Then Amsterdam offered him the entire town hall on the Dam, and he took it.

From 1820 the university's books moved in, and they are still here. The court chapel became a book gallery in 1858.

The next stop lies west, in a narrow street with a name the whole city still laughs at.