A Journey into Fine Arts 🧑‍🎨 & History - Visit De Lakenhal!

Museum De Lakenhal is the city museum of fine art and history in Leiden. Founded in 1874, its collection ranges from early works by Rembrandt van Rijn and Lucas van Leyden's Last Judgement to modern classics of De Stijl and artworks created by contemporary artists such as Claudy Jongstra, Atelier van Lieshout. One notable collection is that of fijnschilder paintings from the Dutch Golden Age.

The museum building was erected in 1640 by Arent van 'Gravesande as a cloth hall (lakenhal in Dutch) – a guild hall for cloth merchants. The museum was founded in 1874 as a stedelijk museum (municipal museum). Since 1874, the space taken up by the museum has gradually grown.

Artifacts from Leiden are on display, such as a series of stained glass windows by Willem Thibaut commissioned for the Leiden city hall, now installed in the stairwells.

On permanent display is also the old inspection room or Staalmeesterskamer,, and the meeting hall where disputes were decided. Four large paintings depicting the cloth industry by Isaac van Swanenburg hang in the same spots on the walls as designed. Similarly, a grand over-the-mantel piece by Carel de Moor shows the inspectors in a massive wooden frame decorated with their family shields, flanked by a series of three historical allegories of the city of Leiden by Abraham Lambertsz van den Tempel.

The museum hosts a collection of altarpieces and religious artifacts from before the Protestant Reformation that were formally ceded to the state in 1572. The museum also includes a reconstructed statie or Catholic mission station from after the Reformation. Because the Catholic religion was banned, there was no official church, and all of the Catholic places of worship in the young Dutch Republic were called mission stations. These were semi-hidden churches that were tolerated and taxed by the state.

Minerva Crowns the Maid of Leiden, one of a series of three grand paintings for the Lakenhal in 1650 by Abraham Lambertsz van den Tempel

The collection also includes A Pedlar Selling Spectacles (Allegory of Sight), one of a series of five, The Senses, by Rembrandt.

We will meet at 2:00pm (1400) in the front of the museum and enter the museum together.

I hope you will join me at the conclusion of our visit at 3:30pm (1530) at the ticket counter. We will proceed to the delightful Museum Café (Courtyard), for drinks and good company.

I look forward to meeting you all at the conclusion of your tour for drinks.

.The Museumkaart is accepted.

☞ 🚉 Amsterdam Centraal (7x/hr - IC⏱️39min.) ➡️ 🚉 Leiden Centraal 🧑‍🦯‍➡️⏱️12min