Your personal Art Tour guide meets you and your guests at your Hotel or at the Train Station. Tour Holland when you visit The Netherlands for the best Art Tours.
Holland Art Tours cover the Golden Age with specific unique opportunities to enjoy local Masters like Mesdag as well as the Dutch Grand Masters like Vermeer and Rembrandt.
The Mauritshuis is one of the most special Dutch Museums in Holland, and is where the Girl with the Pearl Earing can be seen. It opens at 10am and it would be a goal to get there just before or soon after it opens perhaps. I can get in for free but perhaps you would like to consider buying your tickets online beforehand (although the queues are nothing like those that can be seen for some museums in Amsterdam) so if you prefer you can usually quickly buy your tickets reasonably quickly on the day). To do the museum justice I think about 1 hour in the Mauritius is needed.
During our visit to the Mauritius I can provide a summary but educated and entertaining personal commentary to the highlights whereas they have a free iPhone or Android smartphone-apps (probably best to be used with ear phones) for those who prefer a complete catalog; or iPods with the same to be hired at the Museum itself for those without their own hardware. Here is the link of the iPhone one I used quite successfully before: https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/mauritshuis/id888268387
The Hague is only a fifty-minute journey from Amsterdam and public transport is really excellent in Holland, so your trip home will be as easy and not expensive too.
With a great beach on the North Sea coast, The Hague is the home to Holland’s Government, Royal Family and, of course, the International Court of Justice at the Peace Palace.
The Hague has a wealth of cultural history dating back to the 13th Century when it was a little-known hamlet situated by the dunes.
The most famous Museum in The Hague is the Mauritshuis, a former 17th Century palace built by the Governor of Dutch Brazil Johan Maurits.
The 2003 film ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ helped make one of it’s paintings world famous but it contains so many more quality pieces.
Rembrandt’s ‘The anatomy lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp’, Vermeer’s ‘View of Delft’ and Jan Steen’s ‘The way you hear it, is the way you sing it’ – a hilarious 17th Century comment on bringing up children badly – are must-sees plus works by Hans Holbein, Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder.
Also the Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius is a real masterpiece and we have all the story behind this impecable bird.
The Gemeentemuseum Den Haag has more modern art. With a permanent collection featuring Mondriaan, Picasso, Kandinsky, Van Gogh and Monet, there exhibitions are always world beaters.
The Escher in The Palace museum also warrants a visit, paying tribute to the works of Dutch graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher.
Finally a trip to The Hague would never be the same without the amazing experience of the Panorama Mesdag and we have all the story behind this unbelievable and impossible to describe 3D Virtual Reality from 1880!!!
If we have time, the car-free city of Delft – famous for its pottery and birthplace of Vermeer – is a quick tram ride away and gives access to the Royal Delft Blue Factory, Prinsenhof Museum, and the Vermeer Centre of course.
The 170-year-old Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen stands for the city’s heritage by mixing the old and the new.
The museum has an exhibitions building and a permanent collection, featuring art from the late Middle Ages until 1945 and showcases Titian, Bosch and Dali.
An absolute world-wonder is ‘The Tower of Babel’, painted in 1563 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, which has miniature details that can only be seen using a magnifying glass.
The picture’s original owner and museum benefactor Daniel George van Beuningen placed the priceless painting over his stove where he is said to have fried an egg on a Sunday.
The Kunsthal has regular exhibitions that are always well received and is not far away and should not be forgotten about too.
