Sights in The Netherlands
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Houseboat Museum
The offbeat Houseboat Museum is aboard a sailing barge (23m long by 4m wide) from 1914. The displays are rather minimal, but you’ll get a real feel for how cosy life can be on the water when you see the sleeping, living, cooking and dining quarters. In case you were wondering: houseboat toilets, until this century, could drain directly into the canals, but they now must hook up to the city sewerage system.
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Diamond Museum
The Diamond Museum explores the trade’s history and Amsterdam’s shining role in it. The museum is fairly low-tech, and those who are economically minded might want just to go next door to Coster Diamonds (the company owns the museum and is attached to it) and take a free factory tour, where you can see gem cutters at work and hear about the process.
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Museum Van Loon
Museum Van Loon is an opulent 1672 residence that was first home to painter Ferdinand Bol and later to the wealthy Van Loon family. The house recalls canal-side living in Amsterdam when money was no object. Inside there are important paintings such as Wedding Portrait by Jan Miense Molenaer and a collection of some 150 portraits of the Van Loons.
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Mauritshuis
For an introduction to Dutch and Flemish Art 101, visit the Mauritshuis, a small museum in a jewel-box of an old palace. Highlights include the Dutch Mona Lisa: Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. Rembrandts include a wistful self-portrait from the year of his death, 1669, and The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp.
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Rijksmuseum
The Rijksmuseum is the premier art museum of the Netherlands, and no self-respecting visitor to Amsterdam can afford to miss it. Though most of the building is closed for renovations until 2013, there is an excellent collection of around 200 masterpieces – a sort of 'best of’ group – exhibited in a side section, the Philips wing.
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Municipal Museum het Prinsenhof
The Municipal Museum het Prinsenhof is a former convent where Willem the Silent was assassinated in 1584 (the bullet hole in the wall is covered in Perspex to protect it from inquisitive visitors). The museum displays various objects telling the story of the Eighty Years War with Spain, as well as 17th-century paintings.
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Joods Historisch Museum
The Joods Historisch Museum, is a beautifully restored complex of four Ashkenazic synagogues from the 17th and 18th centuries. Displays show the rise of Jewish enterprise and its role in the Dutch economy, and the history of Jews in the Netherlands. The English-language audio tour is excellent (no extra charge).
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Verzetsmuseum
The Verzetsmuseum describes the daily realities of the Dutch resistance during WWII using photos, documents and audio clips. Topics include the concepts of active and passive resistance, how the illegal press operated, how 300,000 people were kept in hiding and how all this could be funded.
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Lakenhal
Get your Rembrandt fix at the 17th-century Lakenhal, which houses the Municipal Museum, with an assortment of works by Old Masters, as well as period rooms and temporary exhibits. The 1st floor has been restored to the way it would have looked when Leiden was at the peak of its prosperity.
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Allard Pierson Museum
Run by the University of Amsterdam, the Allard Pierson Museum, shows a rich archaeological collection, including an actual mummy, ancient Greek and Mesopotamian vases, a wagon from the royal tombs at Salamis (Cyprus), and galleries stuffed to the wainscoting with other fascinating items.
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Hollandsche Manege
Built in 1882, the Hollandsche Manege is an indoor riding school inspired by the famous Spanish Riding School in Vienna. Upstairs is a cafe where you can sip a beer or coffee while watching the instructor put the horses through their paces. Opening times vary, so ring ahead.
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Dam Square & Nationaal Monument
This pigeon-filled expanse was the site of the original dam built across the Amstel. Now it’s busker central, with the occasional puppet show during summer and a Ferris wheel in the spring. The obelisk on the east side is the Nationaal Monument, built in 1956 to honour the fallen of WWII.
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Vermeer Centre Delft
Sort of a high-brow theme park, the Vermeer Centre Delft explores the artist’s life and works in detail, but actually has none of his paintings. Displays go into great detail about each of his paintings and place the subjects in their historical context.
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Naturalis – Nationaal Natuurhistorisch Museum
A stuffed elephant greets you at Naturalis – Nationaal Natuurhistorisch Museum, a large, well-funded collection of all the usual dead critters and, notably, the million-year-old Java Man discovered by Dutch anthropologist Eugene Dubois in 1891.
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Oude Haven
The Oude Haven area, near the Blaak train, metro and tram station, preserves the oldest part of the harbour, some of which dates from the 14th century. It's a decent place for a stroll, especially if you take time to look at the large collection of historic boats.
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Sint Janskerk
Sint Janskerk is a small 17th-century Gothic church, one of the most beautiful in the Netherlands. A remarkable red colour, it photographs beautifully. Climb to the top (€2) for sweeping views.
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Portuguese-Israelite Synagogue
The majestic Portuguese-Israelite Synagogue was built for the Sephardic community in the 17th century, the synagogue was Europe’s largest at the time and was based on the Temple of Solomon.
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Willemswerf
Walk alongside the water on Boompjes until you see the striking 1998 Willemswerf, the headquarters of the huge Nedlloyd shipping company. Note the dramatic lines casting shadows on its sleek, white surface.
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Oude Kerk
The Gothic Oude Kerk is 800 years old and is a surreal sight: its tower leans 2m from the vertical. One of the tombs inside is Vermeer’s.
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Royal Delft
Royal Delft is the only original factory operating since the 1650s.
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Homomonument
The pink granite triangles of the Homomonument, at Westermarkt commemorates gays and lesbians who were persecuted by the Nazis; citizens lay out flowers on Liberation Day (4 May).
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NDSM-Werf
Hop on the ferry behind Centraal Station and set sail for a different world. NDSM-werf looks like the set from a postapocalyptic film – abandoned boats and trams rust by the water’s edge, graffiti scrawls across every surface, smoke stacks belch in the distance, and huge carved wooden tiki heads gaze over it all. The area is actually a city-sponsored art community called Kinetisch Noord that has taken over a derelict shipyard. Participants converted a mondo old warehouse to hold more than 100 studios, theatres and a skateboard hall, and it has quickly become a centre for underground culture and events, such as the Over het IJ Festival. MTV thought the area was so…
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Rijksmuseum
With a collection worth billions, the Rijksmuseum is the cream of Dutch classical art, but until renovations finish in 2008 only 400 masterpieces are on display. If all goes well, the building will be returned to its original 1885 glory. But never mind the building dust, the much-loved Dutch and Flemish paintings from the Golden Age remain on display.
The museum's crowning glory is here too: Rembrandt's mesmerising Nightwatch (1650), the artist's breathtaking group portrait of an Amsterdam civil militia led by Frans Banningh Cocq, a future mayor and apparently not the brightest of lights.
Other must-sees are in Sculpture & Applied Art and Asiatic Art (including the famous…
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Zuiderzeemuseum
The Zuiderzeemuseum consists of two parts: the Buitenmuseum with 130-odd rebuilt dwellings and workshops, and the Binnenmuseum devoted to farming, fishing and shipping. The capitivating Buitenmuseum (open-air), opened in 1983, was assembled from houses, farms and sheds trucked in from around the region to show Zuiderzee life as it was from 1880 to 1932.
Every conceivable detail has been thought of, from the fencetop decorations and choice of shrubbery to the entire layout of villages, and the look and feel is certainly authentic. Inhabitants wear traditional dress, and there are real shops such as a bakery, chemist and sweet shop. For a special postmark drop your letters…
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Holland Experience
Situated next to the Rembrandthuis, this multimedia hype-fest tries to cram all of this little land's big attractions into an overpriced mishmash of sights and sounds. The audience dons 3-D glasses and sits on a rotating platform that lurches along with a plotless half-hour film from tulips to windmills to threatened dykes. Oh dear.
The film has no narration or explanation, just a theme from Swan Lake which gets played ad nauseam. At one point a fish wags its tongue at the audience. Then an on-screen dyke crumbles, the room temperature plummets, and a Sony-augmented thunderstorm rages. As film-making it leaves a lot to be desired but we will say this: the six-year-olds in…
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