Huis Doorn

Wilhelm II abdicated in November 1918, crossed into the neutral Netherlands and was given asylum; from 1920 until his death in 1941 he lived at Huis Doorn, a moated country house on the Utrecht ridge that he bought and filled with furniture, paintings, silver, snuffboxes and uniforms brought in fifty-nine railway wagons from the German palaces. The house was seized by the Dutch state in 1945 and opened as a museum in 1956, and the interiors have not been rearranged - they are as the household left them, which makes it an unusually direct record of how a deposed monarch lived out two decades, including the study, the bedroom where he died and the enormous collection of objects. He spent much of the time chopping wood in the park; thousands of trees came down. He is buried in a mausoleum in the grounds.

What to look for

• Rooms left as in 1941 - the interiors unrearranged since the household stopped.
• Fifty-nine wagon-loads - furniture and objects brought from the German palaces.
• The study and death room - kept as they were at the end.
• A mausoleum in the park - where the last German emperor is buried.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

What to expect

Closed Mondays and much of winter. The subject is a deposed monarch's exile and the presentation is factual rather than celebratory. The park is pleasant; the woodcutting story is visible in the tree stock.

Nearby

Amerongen castle is east; the Pyramid of Austerlitz is north.