| Senate Hill | |
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 Senate Hill, viewed from across the Zumbro River. | |
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Location |
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Construction |
1859- |
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Client |
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Architect |
Calvert Vaux, Marshall Wood, Thomas Scott |
Senate Hill, colloquially known as The Hill, is an area of Crown land on the southern banks of the Zumbro River in downtown Zumbrota, Aloia. It is located across a small valley from the Heiligenberg Palace/Abbey complex, and the together the two sides of the river are collectively called Heiligenberg, and the word is sometimes used to refer to the Aloian government as a whole. Its Gothic revival suite of buildings serves as the home of the Senate of Aloia and contains a number of architectural elements of national symbolic importance. Senate Hill attracts approximately 10 million visitors each year.
Originally the property of the Heiligenburg monastery, development of the area into a governmental center began in 1849, after the Senate and Queen Victoria Augusta, then meeting in Minneapolis, chose Zumbrota as the site of the new capital of the Kingdom of Aloia. Following a number of extensions to the parliament and departmental buildings and a fire in 1916 that destroyed Concordia Hall, Senate Hill took on its present form with the completion of the Peace Tower in 1927. Since 2002, an extensive $1 billion renovation and rehabilitation project has been underway throughout all of the precinct's buildings; work is not expected to be complete until after 2020.