Royal Palace, Amsterdam. The Royal Palace is probably Amsterdam's greatest storyteller. But from the outside, it is somewhat hard to believe that this gray-stained building -- with its aura of loneliness highlighted by the fact that it is one of the city's few freestanding buildings -- was once called the "Eighth Wonder of the World" when it was built between 1648 and 1665 as the largest nonreligious building on the planet, and that it is still used by the royal family for the highest of state occasions. From the inside, its magnificent interior inspires another brand of disbelief: this palace was actually built as a mere city hall -- albeit one for a city drunk with cockiness for having created in a mere 100 years the richest and busiest harbor in the world.

The prosperous burghers of the 17th-century Golden Age, wanting something that could boast of their status to all visitors (in particular, visiting monarchs who belonged to a species that they had always done without), hired the leading architectural ego of his day, Jacob van Campen, who had traveled to Italy to study the heights of perfection represented by the classical world before the Middle Ages so rudely interrupted. With the commission for building the City Hall, he thought that he finally had the opportunity to create something perfect in its dimensions, spatial relationships, and symbolic meaning -- a veritable sermon in stone. The first problem was to create a surface on the blubbery former riverbed that was solid enough to build on. He used the standard local technique of driving wooden piles down to the solid subsurface -- a method that inspired Erasmus to comment that Amsterdammers were the only people he knew who lived on treetops. What was less standard was the sheer total, 13,659 -- a number that is still pounded permanently into the minds of every Dutch schoolchild by the formula of adding 1 to the beginning and 9 to the end of the number of days of the year.

As the building rose, various relatively trivial compromises had to be imposed, but they were sufficient for Campen to give up on the idea of perfection and to leave the rest of the job to his on-site architect, Daniel Stalpaert. Artists and sculptures with such immortal names as Ferdinand Bol, Govert Flinck (both students of Rembrandt, whose own sketches were rejected), and Jan Lievens were called in for the decorating. In the building's public entrance hall, known as the Burgerzaal, the world was placed quite literally at one's feet: two maps inlaid in the marble floor show Amsterdam as the center of the world, and the heavens painted above also present the city as the center of the universe. From here, appropriate gods were positioned to point one in the direction of the different rooms whose entranceways had further sculptures to denote their function: hungry rabid rats over the Bankruptcy Chamber, ill-fated Icarus over the Insurance Chamber, a faithful dog looking at its dead master over the Clerks Chamber, and gruesome scenes of torture over the Sentencing Tribunal. In short: this is a place that practically oozes with symbolism.

During the French occupation of The Netherlands, Louis Napoléon, who had been installed as king in 1808 by his brother Bonaparte, wanted to escape The Hague, where his son had recently died, and decided that this was the building most suitable for a royal palace. Soon the city business was moved to the Prinsenhof (now the Grand Hotel) on OudeZijde Voorburgwal, and the prisoners were transferred to the Rasphuis on Heiligeweg to make room for the royal wine cellar. To improve his view of Dam square, he transferred the function of the Waag, the Weigh House, to the one on Nieuwmarkt so that the original one could be destroyed. The ensuing renovation of the interior was actually done quite tastefully, since Campen's 17th-century classicist vision jelled nicely with that of 19th-century France. Objects were covered with tapestries or wooden panels rather than removed. The rectilinear French Empire furniture -- much of which remains to this day -- blended remarkably well with the interior's tight mathematics.

William V's triumphant entrance into the city in December 1813 marked the beginning of a long-standing debate about who actually owned the palace. Matters were not helped by the fact that Amsterdam and the House of Orange had never really gotten along. The Oranges' endless battles for their dynasty did not sit well with the city's more pragmatic attitude that war was plainly bad for business. However, the city had gotten used to being the country's capital, and when William promised to drop by more often, it was collectively decided that the building would remain a Royal Palace. But, as Geert Mak observed in his definitive book on this building, De Stadspaleis, the palace became a symbol of the royal family's absence rather than its presence, with one visitor going so far as to describe the building as a "mummie, wrapped and dried." It was only after World War II that things started to change. Although Queen Wilhelmina, returning from her exile in England with a great admiration for Amsterdam's resistance movement, preferred to live in The Hague, she did begin using the palace for the grandest of state engagements, such as the coronation of her daughter Juliana and the decolonization ceremonies for Indonesia. Renovations began to return the interior to its City Hall glory days. And, most important perhaps, the locals were allowed in to see things for themselves and admire the 17th-century works of art in their original setting. And so things pretty much continued under the current Queen Beatrix, who, however, required a few years to get over her fear of Amsterdam, understandable after her 1966 wedding was disrupted by Provos throwing smoke bombs at her wedding carriage and her 1980 coronation was derailed by riots on the Dam. COST: EUR4.50.