All About Royal Families

Our 3rd. Royal Palace visit took place on January 7th. 2024 in The Hague.  Then we visited the Lange Voorhout Palace and the exhibition "Escher in het Paleis".  Some History The Lange Voorhout Palace in The Hague was designed in 1760 by the architect Pieter de Swart for Anthony Patras (1718-1764), a deputy to the States General of the Netherlands. In 1796 the mansion was bought by Archibald Hope (1747-1821), a manager of the Dutch West India Company.  Archibald was a cousin of Henry Hope and Jan Hope and involved in the family banking business. In 1808 his wife died.  Napoleon and his wife on their travels through the First French Empire used it one night. The inventory was sold in December 1821 and lasted more than two weeks.  The building was bought by Renaud Diederick James de Ginkell, 7th Earl of Athlone (1773–1823), married to a daughter of John Williams Hope. In 1831 the Minister of Foreign Affairs Johan Gijsbert Verstolk van Soelen (1776-1845) moved in. He had an enorm

9 February 1846 marks the birth of Prince Leopold of Bavaria. This took place in Munich.  Family Prince Leopold of Bavaria was the son of Prince Regent Luitipold of Bavaria  and Archduchess Auguste Ferdinande of Austria. In the army Prince Leopold entered the Bavarian Army at the age of 15, and received his patent as a lieutenant dated 28 November 1861. He saw first combat during the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, where he commanded an artillery battery at Kissingen and Rossbrunn. In 1870, King Ludwig II of Bavaria sent Leopold to the battlefields of France, where the Bavarian Army was fighting alongside the Prussian Army in the Franco-Prussian War. He served with the 3rd Bavarian Artillery Regiment and saw action at Sedan and Beauvert. He was promoted to major in December 1870. For his bravery against the enemy he received both the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Classes, the Bavarian Military Merit Order Knight 1st Class, the Knight's Cross of the Military Order of Max Joseph, Bavaria's

Prince Andrew was born at the Tatoi Palace just north of Athens on 2 February 1882, the fourth son of George I of Greece. A member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, he was a prince of both Greece and Denmark, as his father was a younger son of Christian IX of Denmark. He was in the line of succession to the Greek and more distantly to the Danish throne. He learned Greek as well as Danish, German, French, English and Russian. In conversations with his parents he refused to speak anything but Greek. He attended cadet school and staff college at Athens, and was given additional private tuition in military subjects by Panagiotis Danglis, who recorded that he was "quick and intelligent". Love and Marriage In 1902, Prince Andrew met Princess Alice of Battenberg during his stay in London on the occasion of the coronation of King Edward VII, who was his uncle-by-marriage and her grand-uncle. Princess Alice was a daughter of Prince Louis of Battenberg and Princ

Our 2nd castle visit of  2024 took place on January 6th. On a rather grey Saturday we visited Slot Zeist in The Netherlands. Slot Zeist is a castle built in the 17th. century in Zeist, near Utrecht in  The Netherlands. We travelled from The Hague to Utrecht by train and then we took the bus to the castle. Some history It all started with Willem Adriaan van Nassau, lord of Odijk, Kortgene, Zeist and Driebergen, a natural grandson of Maurice of Orange and thus a natural great grandson of Willem of Orange, also known as the Silent. Willem Adriaan van Nassau  bought the manor of the States of Utrecht in 1677 and had the current castle built. The architect of the house was Jacobus Roman, who also designed Paleis Het Loo.  The interior was mainly designed by the Huguenot Daniel Marot. Its largely preserved wall and ceiling paintings are reminiscent of the French Baroque.  Construction lasted from 1677 to 1686. In 1745, Slot Zeist was purchased by the merchant Cornelis Schellinger. In 1746 h