The Rijksmuseum is the national museum for Dutch history and art, from the Middle Ages up to the present day. The institution is situated on Amsterdam’s Museumplein, the city square also including the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk Museum (modern and contemporary art). The museum’s collection includes one million objects, with up to eight thousand on display. The Rijksmuseum is particularly renowned for its Dutch Masters collection, with more than two thousand paintings from the Dutch Golden Age, comprising significant artists such as Johannes Vermeer and Rembrandt van Rijn. As implied by the numbers, the museum is huge. My visit to the museum was three and a half hours, and we did not even visit every floor. It is not possible to see everything in one day, so be strategic when arriving (the museum map/pamphlet is one of the clearest and aesthetically pleasing I’ve ever seen). Unfortunately no student discounts, and entrance is pricey at 19 euros, but is free for ages 18 and under. Here were the highlights of my visit:

Rembrandt-Velásquez

The special exhibition on view was Rembrandt-Velásquez: Dutch & Spanish Masters, an exhibition comparing the works of the two renowned artists. Other master artists of the era were also sprinkled throughout the exhibition to further highlight artistic similarities between the two cultures. The paintings on view were magnificent, a display of sheer talent. However, the comparisons stayed rather basic: the two artists painting a similar subject, the self-portraits side by side, etc. The wall text was also surprisingly rudimental, probably the simplest language I have ever seen on museum wall text.

Permanent Collection

The rest of our visit was of the permanent collection. We had to prioritize what we wanted to see, so we started with the 17th-century and 19th-century galleries. Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and Goya were highlights.

My two favorite galleries were the Gallery of Honour and the Night Watch Gallery. The former is a massive corridor with vaulted ceilings featuring masterpieces from the 17th century on the alcoves. Some great Vermeer paintings here.

The latter gallery is dedicated to the namesake painting by Rembrandt. Beyond this being the most famous painting in the museum, the work was also undergoing a huge restoration project. Instead of taking the painting to storage for this process, the museum left the painting in the gallery and installed a machine in-situ to analyze the pigments of the painting for research and conservation purposes. Known as Operation Nightwatch, the gallery has become a site where you learn about and watch the meticulous process live. The next phase is restoration.