Corpus Experience

Corpus opened in 2008 at Oegstgeest with a building nobody misses from the motorway: a thirty-five-metre human figure, seated and half-embedded in the glass block behind it, which is the exhibition itself. Visitors take a lift to the knee and then walk upward through the body on a route of about an hour, moving through rooms staged as anatomy at very large scale - into the leg, through the digestive tract, past the heart with the beat audible, into the lungs, up through the bloodstream and finally to the brain, with projections, sound, moving floors and a good deal of staging. It is an educational attraction for schools and families rather than a museum in the collection sense, and it is one of the few of its kind anywhere. There are supporting exhibitions on health and the body afterwards.

What you actually see

• A thirty-five-metre seated figure - the exhibition built as a body on the building.
• A walk from knee to brain - about an hour upward through staged anatomy.
• Staging rather than objects - projections, sound and moving floors through the route.
• A rare format - very few attractions of this kind exist anywhere.

When to go

All year. Half a day.

Honest expectations

Entry is timed and the route is a fixed one-way sequence you cannot leave partway. It is loud and dark in places and aimed at children and school groups. Book ahead in holidays.

Nearby

Leiden and its museums are five kilometres south-east; Katwijk is west.