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Welcome to the Palace of Amsterdam, Palais Op de Damme, in the center of

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Amsterdam and I say again palace because it has been different. This building was

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a city hall in Amsterdam for 150 years. People from Amsterdam used to come here

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to get married or to pay taxes or to solve problems with people like their

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neighbors and a few hundred years later this palace is the place for the

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enthronement and the place where heads of states and the world leaders come to visit

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during those states visits the guests usually take breakfast in this room the rode salon and

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as you can see this room has a lot of history these spaces in the palace tell the stories of

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three important periods in the dutch history the first period is a time of the when this palace

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used to be a town hall and when the netherlands was a republic of the seven united netherlands

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but it tells also about a period in the dutch history when this palace was from a french king

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and it tells about the time of the royal palace from the oranjes which is now we go all the way

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back to the 17th century when amsterdam was the most powerful trading city in the republic

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Amsterdam wanted to show that power and wealth and that is why an impressive town hall had to be built

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with one message that had to be clear and that is that Amsterdam was the center of the universe

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let's take a step further in time in the 18th century Napoleon Bonaparte becomes the

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emperor of France and his brother Louis-Napoleon makes a kingdom of Holland and then the second

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important period begins our country changes from a republic to a kingdom with a kingdom belongs a

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palace and that's what louis bonaparte also thought he could already see himself sitting

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in this palace um so he transformed the he transformed the town hall to a palace in a

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record time of eight months and most of the furniture in the palace comes also from that

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time from the transformation. In 1813 the French rule came to an end and so the throne was empty.

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The new monarch came from the family of Oranje Nassau. Willem I, a great great grandfather from

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our current king right now, Willem-Alexander, wanted to return this palace to the city but

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the city didn't allow and therefore he was allowed to keep the palace and right now Willem-Alexander,

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Alexander, our current king, still uses the palace almost 200 years later.

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Jim Alexander receives all of the imported people from the Netherlands, but also the

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imported people from abroad in this palace.

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And this is also the building where our king became the king in 2013.

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And when the king is not in this palace, it's open to tourists.