Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam - the national museum with Dutch art and history

The Rijksmuseum is the national museum dedicated to the art and history of the Netherlands, located in Amsterdam.

The origins of the museum date back to 1800, when the National Art Gallery in The Hague was established with 200 paintings and historical objects. After eight years, it was moved to Amsterdam, receiving the name Royal Museum.

After several more moves, a competition to build a new home for the museum was announced in 1876. In the first announced competition, Pierre Cuypers came second, but in the end none of the designs were considered suitable.

It was not until the second announced competition that Pierre Cuypers was chosen as the winner, with a design that combined elements of Gothic and Renaissance architecture. Construction of the new building on Museumplein began on 1 October 1876, and it opened on 13 July 1885.

Over the following years, internal renovations and modernisations were made. In December 2003, the museum was closed and a major renovation was undertaken. The renovation work was carried out based on a design by Spanish architects Antonio Cruz and Antonio Ortiz.

On 13 April 2013, after a ten-year renovation costing €375 million, the museum was reopened by Queen Beatrix.

Jean-Michel Wilmotte was hired to do the interiors of the building, the same museologist who was responsible for the interior design of the Louvre.

The museum houses 1 million artefacts, of which more than 8,000 are available for viewing, including numerous paintings, prints, sculptures, applied art and handicrafts. Extremely valuable are the works by the famous artists Rembrandt, Frans Hals and Johannes Vermeer. It is here that you can see famous paintings by Rembrandt, such as "The Night Watch" and "The Jewish Bride".

An interesting fact about the famous 'Night Watch' is that the painting was originally slightly larger, but because it did not fit on one of the walls of the building, it was cropped instead of looking for a wall of larger size. For this reason, the left-hand section of the painting is missing the two men who were once there.

The museum also contains an Asian section, with Japanese prints, Chinese porcelain pieces and other historical articles.

In the museum we can also admire, among other things, the stern of the three-decked ship HMS Royal Charles, built in 1655.

The largest art history research library in the Netherlands is part of the Rijksmuseum.

The Rijksmuseum contains 80 rooms and 1.5 km of walking space. The building is 79.75 metres long and 125.53 metres wide.

The main entrance hall, named the Atrium, replaces a series of gallery extensions in the museum's two inner courtyards. The corridor here, with its ribbed vault, divided the space in two, so the architects lowered the floor to create an underground zone connecting the two sides from below.

In order to fill the courtyard with natural light, the architects installed a new glass roof surrounding this triple-height courtyard. The floor is covered with polished Portuguese stone.

The building has a road passing through its centre. Once serving as the historic gateway to the city, the road was then open to motor vehicles until 1931, but this was not the best solution for the exhibits and the building itself. Motorised traffic was eventually banned, only bicycle traffic was allowed.

The Rijksmuseum was built on around 8,000 wooden piles, which still support the building today. This was probably because of the soil here and the fact that most of Amsterdam is below sea level.

One of the oldest street signs in the city can still be seen here, above the gate on the Museumplein side. There is a stone with a golden finger pointing to the right, and underneath it the inscription 'INRIJDEN', signifying the need to use the right-hand side of the street.

Also, noteworthy are the museum's gardens, where, in addition to ornamental sculptures, statues and water features, one can admire lush living flowerbeds or, for example, a huge wing nut tree that overlooks the playgrounds in the grounds.

In 2014, the Rijksmuseum was the most visited Dutch museum with 2.45 million visitors.