Museums in Leiden

Leiden has 19 museums in a city you can cross on foot in twenty minutes.

That is the highest concentration in the Netherlands, and it is not an accident. Leiden has had a university since 1575, and universities collect. The national antiquities museum, the national natural history collection and the national museum of the history of science are all here, along with an anatomical collection, a herbarium and a working windmill.

Ten of the 19 accept the Museumcard. Five open every day. For American visitors there is a second thread running through the city: the Pilgrims lived here for eleven years before the Mayflower, and two museums deal with it directly.

The national collections

• Rijksmuseum van Oudheden. The national museum of antiquities, with a genuine Egyptian temple reassembled in the entrance hall.
• Naturalis Biodiversity Center. The national natural history collection, rebuilt and one of the strongest dinosaur displays in Europe.
• Boerhaave Museum. The history of science and medicine, and a far more entertaining museum than that description suggests.
• Wereldmuseum Leiden. World cultures, in the former Academic Hospital.
• Museum De Lakenhal. The city’s own art museum, in the seventeenth-century cloth hall, with Rembrandt’s earliest known works.

The Leiden specialities

• Japan Museum SieboldHuis. The collection Philipp von Siebold brought back from Japan in the 1820s, in the house where he lived.
• Leiden American Pilgrim Museum. A fourteenth-century house furnished as the Pilgrims would have known it, run by people who know the history in detail.
• Molenmuseum De Valk. A seven-storey tower mill you climb, with the miller’s rooms preserved.
• Anatomisch Museum Leiden. The university’s anatomical collection, and not for everyone.
• Museumhaven Leiden. Historic vessels moored in the middle of the city, free to walk past.

A day of museums in Leiden

Morning, the old centre

Start at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, which is central and needs about two hours. De Lakenhal is a ten minute walk north along the canal, and the walk itself is half the reason to do them in that order.

Afternoon, out to Naturalis

Naturalis is fifteen minutes south on foot, near the station. It is large, modern and busy with school groups until mid-afternoon, so arriving after two is usually calmer.

For American visitors

The Pilgrim thread makes its own half day. The American Pilgrim Museum, the Pieterskerk where John Robinson is buried and the streets they lived in are all within a few minutes of each other in the old centre.

With children

Naturalis, then the climb up De Valk. Between them they cover dinosaurs and a working windmill, which is most of what a Dutch day out needs to deliver.

Before you go

• Only five of the 19 open every day. Monday closures are the norm.
• Naturalis is busiest with school groups before mid-afternoon during term time.
• Several of the university collections keep limited or weekday-only hours, so check the individual entries below rather than assuming.
• Ten take the Museumcard, including Naturalis, the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, De Lakenhal and Boerhaave.

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 1,002 of them.