A mysterious box from the last century found under a statue of a king in the Netherlands, here’s what’s inside
:focal(379x260.5:389x250.5):watermark(cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ipmgroup/OIO44DUUUNC2DB5T3FIJECBT5U.png,0,-0,0,100)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ipmgroup/6LW2Y3MXXZCVBMNMCHMQ6UXP74.jpg "A mysterious box from the last century found under a statue of a king in the Netherlands, here’s what’s inside")
Workers renovating the parliament building in The Hague were surprised to find a metal box hidden between two walls supporting the King’s foundation.
“It was a big surprise,” said Sophie Ollie, the city’s art historian.
Wearing white gloves, Mayor Jan van Zeen ceremoniously opened the capsule to a room full of journalists to reveal its contents: letters, documents and books.
“It was a very beautiful impression of that time. There was a poem for the king and a poem for the city and the country. It takes us back 99 years to 2024,” Mr van Zenen told AFP.
The discovery stunned historians who had no idea the time capsule existed.
These books are three volumes of William II’s battles in French, including the famous military historian of the time, F. Includes the 1815 Battle of Waterloo against Napoleon by de Bas.
Books discovered in a time capsule in The Hague, Netherlands, January 29, 2024
©ANP/AFP
The city plans to continue the tradition by installing its own time capsule when the statue is replaced in 2028, the mayor said.
“The idea now is to get the people in The Hague to advise us on what to put in the box for those who open in a hundred years,” he said.
He would respect people’s wishes but said his preference would be to fill the box with “text and some images from today, text on renovations and for example a coin (…) one euro”.
