Rijksmuseum

December 16, 2014

Every big city, every capital has its big museums. London has for example the British Museum, Paris the Louvre, Madrid the Prado and Amsterdam has the Rijksmuseum. It is located at the Museum Square, the same square where you can find the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Concertgebouw.
The Rijksmuseum is the National Museum of the Netherlands, dedicated to arts and history. It was founded in 1800 in The Hague and was moved to Amsterdam in 1808. In 2003 the museum closed its doors because of a renovation, meanwhile about 400 objects from the collection were on display in the ‘fragment building’. opened again in 2013. Because of the ten year during closure, the opening was a huge spectacle and in 2013 the Rijksmuseum was the most visited museum of the Netherlands.
One of the most important pieces is The Night Watch (De Nachtwacht in Dutch), by the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn, considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art and the most important in Dutch history.

The collection of the Rijksmuseum consists of 1 million objects from the years 1200 to 2000 and is dedicated to arts, crafts and history. About 8000 of these objects are currently visible in the museum. The collection contains over 2000 paintings of notable painters like Johannes Vermeer, Frans Hals, Jan Steen and Rembrandt van Rijn, all painters from the Dutch Golden Age.

I have never visited the museum, because of its long renovation and before that I simply was too young. But this weekend I´m going back home to spend the holidays there, so there is definitely a “visit the Rijksmuseum” on my to-do-list!

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