Mauritshuis

The Mauritshuis at Plein 29 in The Hague is a small museum of exceptional quality housed in a 17th-century neoclassical mansion originally built for Count Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen. The building, completed in 1644 and designed by Pieter Post and Jacob van Campen, sits on the edge of the Hofvijver court pond at the heart of the Dutch government quarter, its reflective facade one of The Hague's most graceful architectural sights. Inside, 33 rooms on three floors display around 800 works from the Dutch and Flemish Golden Age, constituting one of the finest concentrated collections of this period anywhere in the world. The museum is internationally famous primarily for Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring (c.1665), which hangs on the top floor and is often described as the Dutch Mona Lisa for the ambiguity of the figure's gaze and expression. The same floor holds Rembrandt's Self-Portrait with Hat and Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, a group portrait of considerable sophistication. Other highlights include Fabritius's small, luminous The Goldfinch (c.1654), multiple still-life paintings by Bosschaert and Heda, and portraits by Rubens and Holbein. The relatively intimate scale of the building — most rooms hold only a handful of large canvases — allows unhurried, close examination not always possible in larger museums. A 2012 renovation linked the historic mansion to a modern subterranean extension with a glass-walled entrance stairwell. A typical visit takes 90 minutes to two hours.