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.

Museum Boerhaave- originally a convent in central Leiden, established in 1931 as a science and…read moremedicine museum with an extensive collection of historical scientific instruments. Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738), a Dutch physician, botanist and humanist, for whom the museum is named after, was famous throughout Europe as a teacher of medicine and he is known to have taught Peter the Great, Voltaire, and Linnaeus. Of note, Boerhaave's main achievement was to demonstrate the relation of symptoms to lesions and was the first to isolate urea from urine. In 1724, he was the first to describe what is now known as Boerhaave Syndrome, for which Baron Jan von Wassenaer died from following a gluttonous feast and subsequent regurgitation.

One of the geekier options for fun in Leiden, the Boerhaave Museum is a fascinating stop for anyone…read morewho's interested in history, science, medicine, or any combination of those. It's a national museum, so it's been curated at a very high level. The space itself is in an old building, but one that's been renovated perfectly to show off the items and explain their context. The collection ranges from the 16th century to the present. Not being science-oriented myself, I'll say that the earliest items are the most accessible. The closer you get to the present, the more complicated and specialized everything becomes. Eventually, all the items look like interchangeable metal boxes. But that's just me. If you're at all knowledgeable, I'm sure they're more compelling. The first thing you encounter is a replica of the 17th-century anatomy theater. You can set in the seats and imagine what it would have been like to attend a dissection, at a time when very few people understood the human body at all. This showpiece is surrounded by skeletons (animal and human) and explained by a video. The early medical instruments were also cool (and creepy). Tracing the history of familiar instruments like microscopes and clocks is also interesting, and there are some hands-on displays that help you understand the scientific principles behind them. The natural history collections are amazing and daunting (like an 18th-century version of "Hoarders.") I wish there was an audio guide to help explain the significance of some of the more arcane exhibits. Apart from that, though, this museum is an intellectual treat of the first order.

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.

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.

The tour has really basic information and is explained via a headset in an unbelievably childish…read moretone! I personally expected to see organs in a jar with detailed information on every part of the human body. Now it was just an really long and lousy theme park attraction. Considering the price of €18,75 this was just far below my expectations, next to that the technology used in this "museum" is really outdated. And parking cost 6 euro's! Even when you stay for less than an hour, because that's all the time you will need to explore this 'theme park'..... Enjoy

This museum is amazing!…read more After you purchase your ticket you receive an audio guide, and then begin your journey. You travel through various parts of the human body and receive an educational breakdown of that particular area while you stand in it: the mouth, heart, stomach, lungs, etc. The interactive aspect of the museum makes it much more interesting than your standard science museum. Getting to the museum isn't the easiest especially as someone who doesn't know a lick of Dutch. I tried taking the bus from Leiden Centraal, but the bus wasn't running consistently so I ended up having to do quite a bit of walking, but the museum itself was very enjoyable! I recommend it to anyone visiting the region. I was staying in Amsterdam, and it was well worth the trip to Leiden to visit Corpus.

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.

If you want a slower pace than Amsterdam, Leiden is a smaller town with a few great museums,…read moreincluding the Molenmuseum De Valk (Windmill Museum). This museum entry was fairly inexpensive (I think maybe five euros a person), and you see the inner workings- literally- of the windmill. You can get some great views and pictures of the city. The gift shop has some inexpensive but nice souvenirs and a clean restroom included with the admission price. The only downside to this museum is the steps, which are basically ladders, and you must go down them backwards. Since this is a historical structure, you must use the stairs, so if you're mobility challenged, I would skip the upper floors.

Such a worthwhile museum to visit when in Leiden. It's only 5euros to go up and won't take longer…read morethan an hour. Molen de Valk is one of the scaffold type of windmills. After going up to the main landing, don't skip out on the informational video that discusses the history and importance of windmills in the Netherlands, I learned so much. Then it was super fun to scale up with narrow and steep stairs until the scaffold part. It is pretty scary, esp having to climb backwards to go down, but a great experience.

Japans Musuem Sieboldhuis exhibits is located on Leiden's Rapenburg in a historic Dutch house. You…read morewill find a beautiful collection of old and new art. We stopped in here to purchase a beatiful print of Mount Fuji. They have a wide collection of prints, books, jewelery, toys, and etc. They provide tours,lectures, workshops, film night, and treasure hunts for children.

This is a weird museum. It has a bit of everything- botanical samples, kimonos, prints, kitchen…read moreand table items, military equipment, and there's always a special exhibit (when we went it was Japanese packaging products.) It's very small, and if it's not free (free for those who hold a museum card) I'm not sure it's worth the money. If you have a museum card, by all means, check it out, If you don't like it, you can leave.

Great little historical museum, and the best guide we had on our vacation. It's a weavers house…read morethat is preserved in it's original state, some of it from the 1800's. It's ancient, funky and very very cool. There are art exhibits, looms and you can really get a feel for what life was like for the ordinary people one or two hundred years ago who wove the cloth that made the city wealthy. The nice man guided us around the museum was super sweet. The best!