Het Scheepvaartmuseum

A naval storehouse on the water

Het Scheepvaartmuseum is the Dutch maritime museum, and the building is half the reason to come. It went up in 1656 as 's Lands Zeemagazijn, the storehouse of the Amsterdam Admiralty, and the architect was Daniël Stalpaert. Cannons, sails, flags and all the other gear for the war fleet were kept here, ready to be fitted onto ships.

The Dutch Wikipedia calls the collection the second largest maritime collection in the world, with around 300,000 objects. You will find paintings, ship models, weapons and world maps. But the best part is outside, on the water.

A building that kept sinking

The storehouse stood on 2,300 piles and still began to sink. Buttresses and extra projecting bays were added to stop it from sagging or even collapsing. In 1791 a fire left only the brick walls standing. The blackened façades were then covered in plaster scored to look like blocks of sandstone.

In 1795 the French arrived, the Batavian Republic was founded and the five Admiralties were abolished. The storehouse became a warehouse for the new national navy, and it stayed one until the early 1970s. The museum itself had opened in 1922 in a temporary building on the corner of Cornelis Schuytstraat and De Lairessestraat. It moved here in 1973.

Between 2007 and 2011 the building was closed for a big renovation. Architect Liesbeth van der Pol put a glass roof over the courtyard, and the museum reopened on 2 October 2011. Under that courtyard are barrel vaults that once caught about 40,000 litres of rainwater, drinking water for the ships.

What to look for

Start on the quay. Moored at the jetty is a full-size replica of the Amsterdam, an East Indiaman of the Dutch East India Company. Building began in 1985, based on excavations at the wreck of the original, and the replica dates from 1990. The original sailed in 1749 with 333 people on board and a cargo of silver. She got as far as England. Look up at the masts and rigging, then notice how close the hull sits to the museum wall. The replica is part of the museum, with rooms fitted out to show how people worked and lived on board.

Next to her lies the steamship Christiaan Brunings, built in 1900 as an icebreaker and as the flagship of Rijkswaterstaat, the national water authority. Also look for the boat house on the jetty. It holds the royal barge, a galley from 1816 that the royal family used on special occasions. Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard took it for their silver wedding in 1962. It went back on show here on 15 October 2015.

Inside, go for the maps. The collection has work by Willem Blaeu and his son Joan, the great 17th-century cartographers. There is also a surviving first edition of Maximilianus Transylvanus' De Moluccis Insulis, the first printed account of Magellan's voyage around the world. The paintings show naval officers such as Michiel de Ruyter, and sea battles. Then stand in the courtyard under the glass roof and look at Stalpaert's brickwork from the inside.