Rijksmuseum van Oudheden

Entrance front of the Museum an der Rapenburg.

The Rijksmuseum van Oudheden ( German  Imperial Museum of Antiquities ) is the national archaeological museum of the Netherlands . The museum is located in a historical building complex (including the beguinage ) on the Rapenburg, the most famous canal in Leiden .

Foundation and departments

King Wilhelm I donated the museum in 1818 and appointed Caspar Reuvens , the first professor of archeology at the University of Leiden , as director.

The museum collects archaeological artifacts from cultures that have had a significant impact on the development of the western world , essentially the cultures around the Mediterranean. The collection also includes the most important objects of Dutch archeology from prehistory to the end of the Middle Ages.

The collection is divided into the following sections, which also reflect the structure of the museum's permanent exhibition:

• Old Egypt
• Old Orient
• Classical antiquity
  • Ancient Greece
  • Etruscan
  • Roman Empire
• Netherlands
  • Prehistoric Netherlands
  • Roman Netherlands
  • Medieval Netherlands

Directors

• 1818–1835 Caspar Reuvens
• 1839-1891 Conrad Leemans
• 1891–1903 Willem Pleyte
• 1903–1918 Antonie Holwerda
• 1918–1939 Jan Holwerda
• 1939–1959 Willem Dirk van Wijngaarden
• 1959–1979 Adolf Klasens
• 1979–1989 Hans Schneider
• 1989–1995 (Gerrit) Jan Verwers
• 1995-2005 Renée Magendans
• since 2006 Wim Weijland

literature

Museum history

• Ruurd B. Halbertsma : Scholars, Travelers, and Trade. The Pioneer Years of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden 1818-1840 . Routledge, London 2003, ISBN 978-0-415-27630-6 (English).

Catalogs

• Hendrik Brunsting , Frédéric L. Bastet : Corpus signorum classicorum Musei Antiquarii Lugduno-Batavi. Catalogus van het klassieke beeldhouwwerk in het Rijksmuseum van Oudheden te Leiden (=  Collections of the National Museum of Antiquities at Leiden . No. 5 ). Terra Publishing Company, Zutphen 1982 (English).

Web links

Commons : Rijksmuseum van Oudheden  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Museum website (English, Dutch)
• National Museum of Antiquities . In: holland.com (German)
• Rijksmuseum van Oudheden . In: visitleiden.nl (German, Dutch, English)

Coordinates: 52 ° 9 ′ 30 ″  N , 4 ° 29 ′ 9 ″  E