Hotel Victoria in Amsterdam, also known as the Amsterdam Park Plaza Victoria Hotel, originally built in 1890, was subject of a very strange decision wherin the Dutch “Raad van State” ruled that the entire hotel qualified as a monument, while only the front, the stairs and a few windows still are original and the rest of the hotel dated from 1988 when the hotel had been rebuilt entirely behind its facade.
The Raad van State is the ultimate legal body that decides public law cases as opposed to private law cases that are decided ultimately by the Dutch “Hoge Raad” (Dutch Supreme Court).
Off course the hotelier in question is not happy at all: whenever he wants to replace a washbasin from 1988, he has to ask permission from the Dutch Monuments Board, while buildings from 1988 rarely qualify as a monument,….