Museums in Zuid-Holland

Zuid-Holland has 184 museums across 46 towns, and no single centre of gravity.

Noord-Holland has Amsterdam and then everything else. Zuid-Holland has three cities of real weight within twenty minutes of each other by train: Rotterdam with 43 museums, The Hague with 27 and Leiden with 23. Add Delft and Schiedam and you have a museum region rather than a museum city, which makes it the easiest province in the country to build several days around.

Seventy-eight of the 184 accept the Museumcard. Twelve open every day.

Where the museums are

• Rotterdam, 43. Modern and contemporary, the port, and the Depot. The main Boijmans building is closed for renovation.
• Den Haag, 27. The court collections: the Mauritshuis, the Kunstmuseum, Escher, Panorama Mesdag.
• Leiden, 23. Three national collections in a university city you can walk across.
• Delft, 9. Vermeer, Royal Delft and the Prinsenhof where William of Orange was shot.
• Schiedam, 8. Jenever and the tallest traditional windmills, fifteen minutes from Rotterdam.
• Noordwijk, 6. Coast, space and the dunes.

The ones worth planning a day around

• Mauritshuis, Den Haag. Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring and Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson, in ninety minutes.
• Naturalis, Leiden. The national natural history collection and one of Europe’s best dinosaur displays.
• Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. The world’s first publicly accessible art store, with a public rooftop.
• Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden. The national antiquities collection, with an Egyptian temple in the hall.
• Archeon, Alphen aan den Rijn. Open-air archaeology, with prehistory, the Romans and the Middle Ages built at full size.
• Panorama Mesdag, Den Haag. An 1881 painted panorama in its original rotunda, one of very few left anywhere.

Three days in the province

Day one, The Hague

Mauritshuis at opening, Galerij Prins Willem V next door, then Panorama Mesdag in the afternoon and the sea at Scheveningen if the weather allows.

Day two, Leiden and Delft

Leiden in the morning for the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden and De Lakenhal, then fifteen minutes by train to Delft for the Prinsenhof and Royal Delft. Both towns are small enough that this is comfortable rather than rushed.

Day three, Rotterdam

The Depot and the Kunsthal in the Museumpark, then the water taxi to Katendrecht for the Fotomuseum and FENIX. Schiedam is fifteen minutes away by metro if you want the windmills.

Before you go

• The trains make this work. Rotterdam, Delft, The Hague and Leiden are all within about twenty minutes of each other, so base yourself once and move daily.
• Only 12 of the 184 open every day. Mondays need planning across the whole province.
• Seventy-eight take the Museumcard, second only to Noord-Holland.
• Boijmans’ main building is closed. The Depot and the collection building are open.

Visiting with a private guide

We build private days across this province around the museums you actually want to see, with driving, tickets and timing arranged so the day works rather than sprawls.

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.