Pijpenkabinet & Smokiana

The Pipe Museum Amsterdam, housed in a canal house on Prinsengracht, holds one of the world's largest collections devoted to pipe culture. Don Duco founded it in 1969 as the Pijpenkabinet, bringing together more than 30,000 objects from over 500 years and every continent. Visitors see Gouda clay pipes from the Dutch Golden Age, ornately carved meerschaum pipes from Biedermeier Vienna, Chinese opium pipes and African calabash water pipes. The museum frames tobacco use as a cultural phenomenon and documents the plant's global spread after 1492. Movement through the narrow display rooms of a historic merchant's house is part of the experience, and the attached Smokiana shop sells pipes and tobacco. An idiosyncratic, deeply Amsterdam museum far from the tourist crowds.