Which Dutch city is the seat of government and home to the royal residence?

The Hague holds everything one would normally expect a capital to hold except the title. It grew from a hunting lodge and court of the counts of Holland, and the medieval complex at its heart, the Binnenhof, still houses parliament, arranged around a courtyard with a great hall at its centre. Because the Dutch Republic's assembly met here, foreign envoys came here, and the city acquired a diplomatic character it never lost. That tradition deepened around the turn of the twentieth century with the peace conferences that produced the Hague Conventions on the laws of war, and the building of the Peace Palace, funded by Andrew Carnegie, which houses the International Court of Justice. Other international tribunals followed, so the city is now closely associated with international law. The monarch lives and works here, and the ministries are here, while the constitutional title of capital belongs to Amsterdam.

The city's Dutch name, 's-Gravenhage, means the count's hedge, recalling the hunting grounds it grew from.