Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie

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The Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie (National Museum of Natural History) was a museum in Leiden, The Netherlands. It was founded in 1820 by Royal Decree, formed from a merger of several existing collections. This happened at the instigation of Jacob Coenraad Temminck, who saw the museum primarily as a research institute. There was also a relationship with the University of Leiden. The total collection was already quite large and has grown further over the next 150 years, mainly through regular foreign expeditions and by obtaining private collections from inheritances.

A public museum was however, not present until 1976, although from 1820 to 1913 was the museum normally opened to the public on Sundays. In 1913 the museum moved to a new building, with very little room available for exhibits, and in 1950 this room was also closed. Since then, there have been only a few visitors, on for guided tours, lectures and rare, temporary exhibitions.

In 1976, a paper, "Towards a New Museum", was produced. This led to that the museum taking on more of a central curating role, lending pieces from its collection to other museums. The Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie and the Rijksmuseum van Geologie en Mineralogie merged in 1984. A permanent public exhibition was still not present. That came only when in 1986 the so-called "National Presentation" in the field of natural history was commissioned by the Dutch government. Planning began for a new building, which was completed in 1990 and launched in 1998 as "Naturalis".