Really awesome museum also known as the National Museum of Antiquities. Great museum for Egyptian…read morebuffs with lots of mummies and hieroglyphics. History goes through the Greeks in early middle ages. Plan to spend about 3 hours with the audio tour. Lots to see. They have a decent gift shop and cafe.

This Rijksmuseum location is MUCH smaller than Amsterdam's, but we were staying with friends in…read moreLeiden and visited it first. If we were not in Leiden because our expat friends live there, this museum would not have been on our radar at all. This museum is fairly low key and was NOT crowded on a Friday afternoon. Locker rentals are available to store coats/belongings and are included with the admission cost. For a small museum, there's a ton to see, and in two hours, we didn't make our way through everything. On our visit, they had an exhibition on the Year 1000, which was advertised throughout Leiden, and it was neat to learn about The Netherlands in the Middle Ages. The first floor is mostly Egyptian art which was also fascinating. From Amsterdam, the easiest way to get to Leiden is via train from Centraal station. If you want to explore a Dutch small town/college town, it's worth it to visit Leiden and check out the Rijksmuseum.

The owner hung a sign saying closed due to illness. He didn't even email me or have someone do that…read moreto save me four hours on a train to get there. He has my ticket money too. A property owner next to him hinted he was not sick until seeing a sign on the door... covering for him no doubt. I looked in the windows and it appears to be nothing but dusty books and junk artifacts. What a waste. Do not go.

A museum unlike anything you've ever seen, the American Pilgrim Museum seems to be a labor of love…read moreof one man, Prof. Jeremy Bangs. This is not the kind of place where you wander around with an audio guide. Instead, it's essentially a cramped, 13th-century, one-room home in which you chat with Prof. Bangs about anything Pilgrim-related. This guy is a serious scholar whose bone-dry sense of humor is not for everyone. Honestly, I can't imagine stumbling in here if you're not actually interested in the Pilgrim Fathers, their era, or some aspect of their history. But if you're a history buff, an American, or both, this can be a wonderful side trip. You will learn tons and really imagine what it daily life was like for the Pilgrims in the years between England and the New World. Just to examine furniture, housewares, and plumbing (!) of the period is eye-opening.

This is a lovely museum where we're currently viewing a special young Rembrandt exhibit. It's…read morewonderful. I am also impressed that we are able to use a free locker (with key) to store our winter coats. Excellent museum option outside of Amsterdam's mad crush of tourists. Beware, their reader could not accept our US credit cards that work everywhere else across multiple countries. Clearly their POS software was setup wrong.

an excellent collection of a detailed history of Leiden. Leiden has a rich and extensive history…read more There are many rooms that you walk into, mainly on the second floor that bring you several centuries back. If you don't know much about Leiden, by the time you are done with this museum, it will change. Leiden is quite special.

This is where you go for culture. Not only is it dotted with several museums, but there's also a…read morelovely garden with tons of different paths, fountains, and places to rest and relax.

We bought the museum park for access to all museums in this park cost 27€. For one entry would be…read more14€. Pretty awesome

A well laid out museum with a large collection of masterpieces from artists like Rembrandt, Vermeer…read moreand Ruebens. The famous Girl with the Pearl Earring is captivating but there are many others worth viewing. Check out the lower level and its presentation about how the museum dealt with occupation during WWII.

Walking in, the museum immediately feels calm and intimate. The galleries are beautifully arranged,…read moreand the scale works perfectly -- spacious enough to move comfortably, but small enough that you're always aware of how close you are to the art and the people around you. It's the kind of place where you don't want to be that person blocking a painting, and the layout naturally encourages everyone to share the space respectfully. There's a complimentary coat and bag check, and it's absolutely worth using. Being able to wander without a backpack or jacket makes the whole visit feel lighter and lets you focus entirely on the works in front of you. The collection itself is exceptional -- beautifully curated, full of pieces that genuinely deserve the attention they get. But then you hit the large Stephan Vanfleteren photographs scattered throughout the rooms, and the tone shifts hard. These oversized portraits have the dull, overprocessed look of something you could snap on a smartphone that's been dropped repeatedly and still somehow limps along. They feel completely disconnected from the surrounding masterpieces, like filler chosen because a wall needed something on it. The contrast is so jarring that it pulls you out of the experience, and after a few rooms, it starts to feel less like an artistic choice and more like an intrusion. It's baffling that a museum with such a refined collection would wedge in work that looks this flat, this mismatched, and this unworthy of the space it occupies. By the time you finish, the memory of the classical works is still there, but so is the irritation -- those photographs linger in the worst way, leaving the overall experience feeling uneven and not nearly as polished as it should be.

Fantastic visit and one of the best museums I have been to…read more Professional and educational.

The Naturalis Museum, or, to give it its English name, the Museum of Natural History, is an…read moreenormous natural history museum in the city of Leiden, in the Netherlands. The museum is a new building, situated on 4 floors and is located near to the university, opposite the site of the famous mental hospital. I apparently houses over 10 million objects. Upon entering the museum there's an option to plan your visit using a map on the wall, get a coffee from the cafe, or use the toilets. There's a reception desk for purchasing tickets for entry into the museum, though this is rather small and queues are large. There's no way of the staff actually making sure everyone who enters has paid, as it's on one side of a large foyer, which is always crowded with people going in all different directions, or just standing around. After the reception area is a shop which mainly sells books on things related to natural history - dinosaurs, animals, fish, plants etc, but also a few toys and games and the usual gift shop items. Further on is a section on dead animals. There are a lot of wooden drawers filled with bones. It's interesting, in a sense, but I thought it a bit boring to have to open lots of drawers looking at bones. Past this section there's a bridge and in the centre of the bridge there's a bull, called Hermann, who was the first genetically-modified cow in the world. Further on is nature theatre, with displays of all types of stuffed animals, including dinosaurs. The other floors focus on specific topics and exhibitions, such as rocks and crystals, or the Earth. There are various interactive elements and games, in Dutch, English, German and French, which adds an interesting element to the museum. Everything is very colourful which gave me the impression that the museum is aimed at young children.

I was all museum'd on my Eurotrip, so Boijmans Van Beuningen was the only one I visited while I was…read morein Rotterdam. Fortunately for me, the place was under renovation so it was half price to enter (€7.50 instead of €15). Unfortunately for me, there was still a TON to see. I think most other people would consider that second one a pro instead of a con. Anyway, in case you can't tell, I'm not much of a museum person. So I like modern art and crazy displays. BVB had both in spades. At the front, there are a ton of surrealist paintings and sculptures, including some from Salvador Dali and Magritte. There's also some Mondrion's sprinkled throughout. In the middle is The Collection as Time Machine, which is basically just a lot of paintings arranged by century, curated to tell how European art themes/techniques changed and morphed over time. The layout of those rooms is a little weird, as you can cut through multiple ways. Easy to skip if it's not your thing. Then when you go downstairs, there's a ton of modern art including what this place is probably most known for - some creepy dude coming up through the floor. And also a creepy boy sitting in the corner that scared the crap out of me when I walked into the room. Further down, there was a cool exhibit about discontinued electronics and furniture design. That's the kind of random shit I liked to look at in museums. There was also a "Bling" exhibit which was all sorts of shiny things, some artifacts, some random and modern. Wasn't sure what to make of that. All in all, I spent probably two and a half hours there (which was an hour longer than I thought I needed). If the entire place is open, you could definitely spend upwards of three hours. Definitely check it out!

A very unique experience, though a bit pricey at around $24 USD (€20-22). It's important to know…read morethat this isn't a traditional museum; it's a high-tech art storage center that happens to be open to the public. The focus is really on the "behind-the-scenes" of art preservation--how pieces are crated, cleaned, and stored in climate-controlled rooms. The building itself is a masterpiece. It spans several floors, and while the individual sections feel small, the central atrium with its zig-zagging staircases is massive. There's an elevator if you want to skip the stairs! They offer free 10-minute "walk-in" tours of the storage compartments, plus more detailed "behind-the-scenes" tours that are worth the extra look. The top floor has a great cafe/restaurant (Renilde) and an outdoor space with a forest of birch trees. The 360-degree view of Rotterdam is breathtaking. If you love architecture or are curious about how museums actually work, it's worth the price. If you just want to see a standard art gallery, you might find it a bit expensive.

Fantastic museum for any one who appreciates interesting art or is an Escher lover. The museum has…read morea QR code that you can scan which provides a free overview of the most popular prints. You can read or listen to the guide. This was very helpful in getting the background story on the art and covers the top 12. There are 2 floors of prints from Escher and artists who were inspired by him. No parking.

Loved this museum. It's a small museum but very interesting. It captures storytelling of Escher's…read morelife and how it is portrayed in his art. Loved how the rooms are laid out for this purpose as well. Good labeling on the pieces and useful to have the free audio tour accessible via phone.

I went here with my cousin, sister, aunt, and mother, and had an amazing time looking at the new…read moreexhibit. All of the staff was extremely kind and helpful and the exhibit was extraordinary. The photo s were gorgeous and shocking and educational all at the same time. The Indonesia exhibit was also very interesting with helpful guides and ornate artifacts. I'm sorry I didn't get to see the rest of the museum and the gift shop. I guess that has to wait for next visit!