The Binnenhof

You end where the walk began, at a complex that nobody ever designed.

It started in the thirteenth century as a hunting lodge for Floris the Fourth, count of Holland. His successors added a hall, then a chapel, then offices, then more offices, each generation building against what the last one left behind. The walled courtyard in the middle gave the whole thing its name. Binnenhof means inner court, which is a modest name for the place a country ended up being run from.

The Hall of Knights still stands at the centre of it, and for generations the monarch read the annual Speech from the Throne there on the third Tuesday of September. That ceremony has moved elsewhere in the city for as long as the works last.

And the works will last. Rebuilding began in 2021 with a budget of four hundred and seventy five million euros. Current estimates run to roughly two billion, and the earliest completion anyone will put on paper is the end of 2028. The complex is closed, the facades are wrapped, and the whole of parliament is governing from borrowed buildings around the corner.

A country that struggles to agree on anything has agreed, at considerable cost, to rebuild the house it does its arguing in.