Rijksmuseum Boerhaave
Five centuries of Dutch science in a former plague hospital, with Leeuwenhoek's microscopes and an anatomy theatre.
Updated 21 October 2026
The museum is named for Herman Boerhaave, the Leiden professor who reorganised medical teaching around the bedside in the early eighteenth century and drew students from across Europe, and it occupies the Caecilia hospital where he taught - a building that had been a convent and then a plague hospital. The collection covers Dutch science and medicine from the sixteenth century: Antoni van Leeuwenhoek's surviving microscopes, single-lens instruments of his own making with which he first described bacteria, protozoa and sperm cells; Christiaan Huygens's pendulum clocks and lenses; Kamerlingh Onnes's apparatus from the Leiden cryogenic laboratory where helium was first liquefied and superconductivity discovered in 1911. A reconstruction of the Leiden anatomical theatre of 1594 stands in the courtyard, the wooden tiers with skeletons around them as the contemporary prints show it.
History
The museum goes back to a Historical Exhibition of Natural Science and Medicine held at Leiden University in 1907. The physicist Claude August Crommelin set up a foundation in 1928, the museum opened in 1931 and became a national museum in 1947, and since 1991 it has occupied the former convent of Saint Cecilia, a building of the early 15th century that was made into a pest house shortly before 1600; it was European Museum of the Year 2019 (Wikipedia, Museum Boerhaave).
What to look for
- Leeuwenhoek's microscopes - single-lens instruments that first showed bacteria.
- The 1594 anatomy theatre - reconstructed with skeletons on the wooden tiers.
- Kamerlingh Onnes's apparatus - from the lab where superconductivity was found in 1911.
- Huygens's clocks and lenses - the pendulum work and the optics.
When to go
All year. Half a day.
Things to know
Closed Mondays. The subject is technical and the labelling assumes interest. Human skeletal material is displayed in the anatomy theatre reconstruction. It is smaller than Naturalis nearby.
Nearby
The Rijksmuseum van Oudheden and Naturalis are a short walk.
Key facts
Source: Wikidata, item Q759169, read on 18 October 2026.
What to pack for Rijksmuseum Boerhaave
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- Comfortable walking shoes - Sightseeing means kilometres of pavement and cobbles daily. Find on Amazon
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