Hawaii's last queen was imprisoned in an upstairs bedroom of her own palace, and the building served as the capitol of the government that removed her until 1969

King Kalākaua built ʻIolani Palace in Honolulu from 1879 to 1882 for more than $340,000. After the monarchy was overthrown on 17 January 1893, the Provisional Government took the palace as its headquarters and renamed it the Executive Building. Many original furnishings were sold at public auctions; personal belongings went back to the royal family. In January 1895 a royalist uprising failed and firearms were found at the queen's home, Washington Place. On 16 January 1895 Liliʻuokalani was arrested and confined in an upstairs bedroom of the palace. On 24 January she signed an abdication while six of her supporters were under sentence of death. On 8 February a military commission tried her in her former throne room and sentenced her to five years of hard labor and a $5,000 fine. She was held in the palace until September 1895^† and pardoned on 13 October 1896. With her companions she made a quilt in that room. The US flag was raised over the palace on 12 August 1898. The building served as the capitol of the Republic, the Territory and the State of Hawaii until government offices left in 1969. In 1917 she lay in state in its throne room. The Friends of ʻIolani Palace, founded by her relative Liliʻuokalani Kawānanakoa Morris, restored it and opened it as a museum in 1978, buying back furnishings sold off after 1893. In 2026 the state owns the grounds and the Friends run the house.