Willet-Holthuysen Museum
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The Willet-Holthuysen house is a national museum of the Netherlands, located in Amsterdam on the Herengracht. It has a large collection of silverware, plate, and books from the Dutch Golden Age and a substantial collection of art. The house is most famous, however, for giving an impression of the interior of a typical Amsterdam patrician house of the 18th century.
[edit] History
The house was built for Jacob Hop, mayor of Amsterdam, around 1685. He was not the last mayor to own the house. In 1739 the outside was redesigned to look as it does today, in the highly fashionable Louis XIV style. The last private owner, Mrs. Willet-Holthuysen, bequeathed the entire house to the city of Amsterdam on condition it become a museum in 1895. It has been a museum ever since.
[edit] The House
Three floors are open to the public, the souterrain, with the kitchen and garden (restored in 1972), the first floor ('bel-etage' with long hallway), and the top floor, with one bedroom on display and rooms for exhibitions. In the blue room, several paintings on the walls show previous owners (by unspecified artists). In this room are also several decorative paintings by Jacob de Wit, though these have been transplanted from other buildings in Amsterdam. Decorative pieces by Jacob de Wit were once in the house, but previous owners took them with them. It is not clear if some of the current Jacob de Wit paintings are 'back home'.
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