Museums in Haarlem

Haarlem has 13 museums, and one of them has barely changed since 1784.

Teylers is the oldest museum in the Netherlands and still works the way it was built to: an oval hall lit by daylight alone, original display cases, fossils and instruments arranged as the Enlightenment arranged them. Nowhere else in the country gives you the feeling of walking into a museum of museums.

Add the Frans Hals Museum across two buildings and a former asylum turned into a museum of the mind, and Haarlem carries a collection out of proportion to its size. Seven of the 13 accept the Museumcard. None open every day.

The ones most visitors come for

• Teylers Museum. Opened 1784, unchanged in spirit, and the reason to come. Daylight only in the main hall, so a bright day genuinely shows it better.
• Frans Hals Museum. The definitive collection of the painter, split between the old almshouse site and the Hal on the Grote Markt.
• Museum van de Geest. In the Dolhuys, a former asylum, telling the history of psychiatry from inside the building where it happened. Unsettling and very good.
• Corrie ten Boom House. The watchmaker’s house with the hiding place behind the bedroom wall, shown by guided visit only.
• Museum Haarlem. The city’s own story, useful early in a visit for the context it gives everything else.

The smaller ones

• Verwey Museum Haarlem. Changing exhibitions on the city, its writers and its artists.
• ABC Architectuurcentrum. Architecture and the shaping of the city.
• Archeologisch Museum Haarlem. Under the Vleeshal on the Grote Markt, and free.
• Draaiorgelmuseum. Street organs, which are more a Haarlem tradition than most visitors realise.
• Hofje van Bakenes. The oldest almshouse courtyard in the country, from 1395.

A day of museums in Haarlem

Everything here is within fifteen minutes on foot, which makes Haarlem the easiest museum day in the Netherlands. It is also twenty minutes by train from Amsterdam Centraal, so it works as a day out rather than a trip.

Morning, the Grote Markt

Start at the Frans Hals Museum’s Hal site on the square, then walk five minutes south to the main Frans Hals building. Seeing the two in order gives you the painter and then the city that produced him.

Midday

Eat on the Grote Markt or in the Vleeshal’s shadow, then go into the Archeologisch Museum underneath it for twenty minutes, because it is free and almost nobody does.

Afternoon, the Spaarne

Teylers is on the river, five minutes east. Give it two hours and do not rush the oval room. If you have anything left, Museum van de Geest is a fifteen minute walk north and is the museum people talk about afterwards.

If you only have half a day

Teylers and one Frans Hals site. Attempting all thirteen in a day is how Haarlem becomes a blur.

Before you go

• None of the 13 open every day. Monday is the usual closing day across the city.
• Teylers is best in daylight. The main hall has no artificial lighting, so a winter afternoon shows it at its worst.
• The Corrie ten Boom House runs guided visits only, in fixed languages at fixed times, and is closed on Sundays and Mondays.
• Seven take the Museumcard, including Teylers, both Frans Hals sites, Museum Haarlem and Museum van de Geest.

Visiting with a private guide

We arrange private guided visits at many of the museums on this page, with tickets and timed entry handled for you and the route built around opening days rather than around a fixed itinerary.

Plan your tour, or see all our private tours.

This page is part of our complete guide to museums in the Netherlands, covering all 1,167 of them.