The Louis-Philippe Room

The Louis-Philippe Room contains the oldest interior furnishing in whole Norway. You can find it in the cultural center in Bodø, which initiated the restauration process of the furniture and the mural paintings in 2009. The room is entitled after the French King Louis Philippe who came to Bodø in 1795 as a refugee of the revolutionary government in Paris. In the time he stayed in Bodø he lived in the Bodin parsonage which was decorated and painted in the rococo style. The wall painting has been removed from its original room into a smaller one, so the paintings do not have their original size anymore. The first restauration process has not been done very thoughtfully so that the paintings started to deform and got stained. That is why the second project to preserve this important cultural heritage started in 2010. Since there is barely qualified staff in Norway they got help from Polish and German students who took over the process. Since the restauration process is very long the room is still not open for the public today but it is planned to reopen it for visitors for the 200-year-old anniversary of Bodø. The room itself was really beautiful and I totally support to preserve such cultural heritage. The effort to restaurate paintings like that is enormous and the students working on it did a great job. Finding and reproducing the exact colors that have been used originally takes a lot of time and research. The atmosphere was great, like being in another time. All the details are beautiful. I really hope that the room will last very long, since the conditions to obtain the wall paintings are not perfect in Norway. The humidity is quiet high in Bodø, which could cause another deformation. But removing it from its original location is not a possibility either.