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LEIDEN |
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The home of the country's most prestigious university, LEIDEN has an
academic air. The students give the town a certain energy, and Leiden's
museums are varied and comprehensive enough to merit a visit in
themselves, though the town's real charm lies in the peace and
prettiness of its gabled streets and canals.
Leiden's most appealing quarter is that bordered by Witte Singel and
Breestraat, focusing on Rapenburg, a peaceful area of narrow pedestrian
streets and canals that is home to the city's best-known attraction, the
Rijksmuseum Van Oudheden , Rapenburg 28 (Tues-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat & Sun
noon-5pm; ¬3.20), the country's principal archeological museum. You can
see one of its major exhibits for free in the front courtyard - the
first-century AD Temple of Teffeh, a gift from the Egyptian government.
Inside the museum are more Egyptian artefacts, along with Classical
Greek and Roman sculpture and exhibits chronicling the archeology of the
country through prehistoric, Roman and medieval times. Further along
Rapenburg, at no. 73, the Hortus Botanicus (March-Oct daily 10am-6pm;
Nov-April Mon-Fri & Sun 10am-4pm; ¬3.60; www.hortus.leidenuniv.nl ) are
among the oldest botanical gardens in Europe, planted in 1587. Across
Rapenburg, a network of narrow streets converges on the Pieterskerk (daily
1.30-4pm; free), deconsecrated these days but still bearing the tomb of
John Robinson, leader of the Pilgrim Fathers, who lived in a house on
the site of what is now the Jan Pesijn Hofje, at Kloksteeg 21.
East of here, Breestraat marks the edge of Leiden's commercial centre,
behind which the two rivers converge at the busiest point in town, the
site of a vigorous Wednesday and Saturday market which sprawls right
over the sequence of bridges into the blandly pedestrian
Haarlemmerstraat, the town's major shopping street. Close by, the Burcht
(daily 10/11am-11pm; free) is a rather ordinary, graffiti-daubed shell
of a fort perched on a mound, whose battlements you can clamber up for a
view of Leiden's roofs and towers. The nearby Hooglandsekerk (mid-May to
mid-Sept Mon 1-3.30pm, Tues-Sat 11am-3.30/4pm; free) is a light, lofty
church with a central pillar that features an epitaph to Pieter van der
Werff, the burgomaster at the time of a 1574 siege by the Spanish, who
became a hero by offering his own body as food. His invitation was
rejected, but - the story goes - it instilled new determination in the
flagging citizens. Across Oude Rijn from here, the Museum Boerhaave ,
Lange Agnietenstraat 10 (Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm; ¬3.40) is a
brief but absorbing guide to medical developments over the last three
centuries, with some gruesome surgical implements, pickled brains and
the like. Five minutes' walk away, Leiden's municipal museum, in the old
Cloth Hall, or Lakenhal , Oude Singel 28-32 (Tues-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat &
Sun noon-5pm; ¬3.60) has mixed rooms of furniture, tiles, glass and
ceramics and a collection of paintings centred on Lucas van Leyden's
Last Judgement triptych, plus canvases by Jacob van Swanenburgh, the
first teacher of the young Rembrandt, and by Rembrandt himself. Around
the corner on Molenwerf, the Molenmuseum de Valk , 2e Binnenvestgracht 1
(Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; ¬2.30), is located in a restored grain
mill, one of twenty that used to surround Leiden, with living quarters
furnished in simple, period style and a slide show recounting the
history of windmills. Between here and the station at Steenstraat 1, the
National Museum of Ethnology (Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde; Tues-Sun
10am-5pm; ¬6), has extensive sections on Indonesia and the Dutch
colonies. Near the station on Darwinweg, Leiden's newest museum,
Naturalis , the Museum of Natural History (Tues-Sun noon-6pm; during
school holidays daily 10am-6pm; ¬7.30; www.naturalis.nl ), boasts two
dinosaurs, a prehistoric horse and a whole host of exhibits from the
animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms.
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