Museum Het Rembrandthuis (Rembrandt House Museum)

Description:

• To view the greatest masterpieces by Rembrandt van Rijn, you must visit the Rijksmuseum, but in this circa-1606 house, you get a more intimate sense of Rembrandt -- it's a shrine to one of the greatest artists the world has ever known. Rembrandt bought this three-story, 10-room house in 1639 when he was Amsterdam's most fashionable portrait painter. In this house, his son Titus was born and his wife Saskia died. Due to his extravagant lifestyle, the artist was bankrupt when he left it in 1658 and moved with his son Titus and his mistress Hendrickje to a plain house (that no longer exists) on Rozengracht.

  Not until 1906 was the building rescued from a succession of subsequent owners and restored as a museum. More recent restoration has returned the old house to the way it looked when Rembrandt lived and worked here, complete with a ground-floor kitchen and the maid's bedroom. Additional work in 2000 restored the artist's art-and-curiosities cabinet, his combined living room and bedroom, and the upstairs studio in which he created, among other famous works, The Night Watch.

  The rooms are furnished with 17th-century objects and furniture that, as closely as possible, match the descriptions in Rembrandt's 1656 petition for bankruptcy. His printing press is back in place, and you can view 250 of his etchings and drawings on the walls, along with works by some of his contemporaries, like Jan Lievens, and his teacher, Pieter Lastman. These include self-portraits and landscapes, and several that relate to the neighborhood's traditionally Jewish character -- like the portrait of Rabbi Menassah ben Israel, who lived across the street and was an early teacher of another illustrious Amsterdammer, Baruch Spinoza. Temporary exhibits are mounted in a modern wing next door. Opposite the Rembrandthuis, appropriately, is the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (Amsterdam High School for the Arts).

• © Frommer's 2012

Awards:

Frommer's

•  Highly Recommended 2010
•  Recommended 2009