Museum De Lakenhal

The Museum De Lakenhal is the municipal art and history museum of Leiden, housed in the city's former cloth hall of 1641, where Leiden's famous textiles were once inspected and stamped for quality. Founded in 1874 and reopened in 2019 after a long renovation that added a modern wing, it puts the Leiden Golden Age at the centre of its display: early works by the city-born Rembrandt, Lucas van Leyden's Last Judgement triptych, paintings by Jan Steen and the Leiden fine-painters. Alongside these, the museum documents civic history through textiles, silverware and relics of the Spanish siege of 1574. An hour is enough for the main galleries; the building sits on the Oude Singel in the heart of the old town.