Tuynhuys

De Tuynhuys is the office of the president of South Africa, standing in Cape Town between the Houses of Parliament and the Company's Gardens. The Dutch East India Company built it beginning in 1674 as a toolshed, converted it into a guesthouse around 1682, and expanded and renovated it through 1751; the architect Louis Michel Thibault is credited with its overall design, while the sculptors Jacobus Leeuwenberg and Anton Anreith created its exterior artistic details. The building blends Louis XVI style Neoclassicism with Baroque elements drawn from eighteenth century Dutch and Dutch East Indies design, including rococo balusters and stucco drapery, and later British era additions under Governor Lord Charles Somerset added a ballroom and a marble staircase. A major restoration in 1968, led by the architect Gabriel Fagan, returned the building to its eighteenth century appearance, and its garden facade today carries a twenty four metre frieze and balustrade with sculptures of Mercury and Poseidon.