In a statement reported by The Irish Times, the royal household said 20 to 30 refugees, or about six to eight families, will be able to stay at Het Oude Loo castle, which is on the grounds of Het Loo Palace in Apeldoorn, a city in the center of the Netherlands.
The announcement came after more than 10 million Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes and more than 3.5 million have fled the country altogether as the war with Russia nears the end of its first month. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, experts say this could be Europe’s largest war-related mass migration since the Balkan Wars in the 1990s, with the United Nations preparing for as many as 7 million refugees.
The royal household’s statement said the families will be able to stay for as long as is “deemed appropriate,” according to The Irish Times. It did not specify how the families will be selected.
The palace was built in the 15th century, serving as the royal family’s summer residence for many years then becoming a museum in 1984, according to Holland.com. The large palace with sprawling gardens and pavilions is often referred to as the “Versailles of Holland,” The Irish Times added.
Het Oude Loo castle is even older, with historical documents showing it belonged to a lord before 1439, according to a translation of Het Loo Palace’s website. It became a property of the House of Orange-Nassau, the ruling house of the Netherlands, in 1684.
It was once a hunting lodge and has a moat surrounding it, the website added.
According to the statement in The Irish Times, the agreement to allow refugees to stay in the castle was struck between King Willem-Alexander, the country’s agency for refugee settlement, state property managers and local Apeldoorn officials.
The last time Het Oude Loo castle was lived in was in 2006, when Japanese Prince Naruhito and Princess Masako, who are now emperor and empress, stayed there to get away from the pressures of Japanese court, DutchNews.nl reported.
According to the NL Times, there are about 1,700 host families in the Netherlands already housing Ukrainian refugees, with Ukrainians with host families receiving 135 euros per week and those in shelters receiving 60 euros per week. King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima have had multiple visits with the Ukrainian refugees in the Netherlands.
The Dutch royal family is not the only one providing housing to refugees. King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium also recently announced three properties in Brussels and Wallonia would be made available to Ukrainian families, the NL Times added. Other programs are also launching in places like the United Kingdom to allow more Ukrainians to find safe housing.
Data from the UN shows that the majority of Ukrainian refugees have fled to Poland, with that country receiving more than 2.1 million refugees as of Monday. Many others have fled to nearby countries like Romania, Moldova, Hungary and Slovakia.
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Update 03/22/22 4 p.m. ET: This story was updated to add more information.
