The Stadhouderlijk Hof was for centuries the Leeuwarden residence of the stadtholders of Friesland — and, through marriage and inheritance, an ancestral house of the Dutch royal family. Willem IV grew up here in the early 1700s; the building remained Crown property until 1971 and now serves as a hotel and conference centre with public access to several rooms.
The exterior is restrained baroque in red brick with sandstone trim. Inside, the most rewarding rooms preserve their eighteenth-century mouldings, tiled fireplaces, and painted ceilings. The Prinsentuin garden behind it — a small Renaissance plot rebuilt in the nineteenth century — is open to the public and worth a wander.