Mauritshuis — museum
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Mauritshuis

  • 2 min read
  • 52.080° N 4.314° E

Interesting facts

  • Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring was bought at a Hague auction in 1881 for just two guilders plus a thirty-cent premium; it has hung in the Mauritshuis since 1902.
  • The girl is not a portrait but a tronie, a 17th-century Dutch study of a head in exotic costume, here an oriental turban and an outsized pearl.
  • Fabritius's Goldfinch may have been in his Delft workshop when the 1654 gunpowder explosion killed him; tiny dents in its paint could date from the blast.
  • Because its pale stone and its builder's fortune came from sugar plantations in Brazil, the house was mockingly nicknamed the Sugar House.
  • Before returning from Brazil, John Maurice shipped tropical wood to The Hague for the staircase and filled the hall with Brazilian weapons, stuffed animals and paintings.
  • The house once had a cupola, lost in the 1704 fire, and an underground passage that led beneath the road to its garden until it was sealed in 1808.
  • Stadtholder William V's paintings, the core of the collection, were seized by the French in 1795 and only partly recovered in 1808.
  • During the Nazi occupation people evading forced labour hid in the building's attic and basement, even while occupying officials worked inside.

Why it is worth it

The Mauritshuis is a small museum with an outsized collection. The building itself is a textbook of Dutch Classicism: a strictly symmetrical two-storey house designed by Jacob van Campen and Pieter Post and built between 1636 and 1641 for John Maurice of Nassau-Siegen while he governed Dutch Brazil. It stands on the Hofvijver pond right beside the Binnenhof, the seat of Dutch government for centuries. A fire in 1704 gutted the interior, which was rebuilt; the state bought the house in 1820 and opened it in 1822 as the home of the Royal Cabinet of Paintings, the core of which came from the collection of stadtholder William V.

The collection is only around 850 objects, which is exactly why a visit works so well: the Dutch and Flemish painting is dense, and the famous works hang in intimate rooms rather than vast halls. Three pictures bring most visitors. Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, from around 1665; his View of Delft, one of the most admired townscapes in European art; and Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp of 1632. Around them hang Carel Fabritius's tiny Goldfinch of 1654, Paulus Potter's The Young Bull, Frans Hals's Laughing Boy, Jan Steen's crowded family scenes and a late self-portrait by Rembrandt from 1669.

The museum does not hide the uncomfortable side of its founder: its own interpretation explains the role John Maurice played in the slave trade in Dutch Brazil and how that wealth paid for the house. A renovation completed in 2014 by Hans van Heeswijk linked the old house through an underground passage to the neighbouring Sociëteit de Witte building, adding space for exhibitions without touching the historic rooms. During the Second World War the paintings were kept safe in a bunker and later in caves near Maastricht.

Getting there

The museum is at Plein 29 in the centre of The Hague, about 1 km from the heart of the city and roughly a ten-minute walk from Den Haag Centraal station. The nearest airport is Rotterdam The Hague Airport (RTM), about 16 km away; Amsterdam Schiphol (AMS) is the larger international alternative.

Plan your visit

We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.

Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in South Holland 7The Most Beautiful Places in the Kingdom of the Netherlands 25The Most Remarkable Museums in the Kingdom of the Netherlands 7The Most Beautiful Buildings in the Kingdom of the Netherlands 10The Most Remarkable 19th-Century Museums 12The Most Beautiful 19th-Century Buildings 28The Most Remarkable Museums 93The Most Beautiful Buildings 286

From the encyclopaedia

The Mauritshuis is an art museum in The Hague, Netherlands. The museum houses the Royal Cabinet of Paintings which consists of 854 objects, mostly Dutch Golden Age paintings. The collection contains works by Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Steen, Paulus Potter, Frans Hals, Jacob van Ruisdael, Hans Holbein the Younger, and others. Originally, the 17th-century building was the residence of Count John Maurice of Nassau. The building is now the property of the government of the Netherlands and is listed in the top 100 Dutch heritage sites.

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