Amsterdam Part 3

While visiting Amsterdam we had the opportunity to see some wonderful art. The Dutch painters are responsible for some fantastic pieces. While biking through the city we came to Rembrandt Square. It was a very pretty green space with life size statues of his famous work The Night Watch. It was quite impressive. Please excuse the tourists in the photos. I gave up on trying to get clean shots.

We also rode to the Rembrandt House museum but after reading the brochure we decided not to go inside. We went to the Van Gogh museum but did not care for it! It was rather small and all of the works were behind glass. Also, his best known works were not in that museum and we thought the admission was over priced. Next we went to the Rijks Museum and loved everything about it. We could have stayed there all day.  The building itself was remarkable and the collections were outstanding. Many of the more well known works had excellent printed art guides in various languages and they were very informative.

The Rijks Museum is so big that we couldn’t get the whole building in one picture!

Let’s zoom in on some of the details.

Notice the rooftop statue on the left even has a “canvas” he is painting.

There was a beautiful garden in back.

The inside was quite impressive too.

There were beautiful stained glass windows and vaulted ceilings.

I want to share just a few of the highlights of the museum. One of our primary purposes of our trip was to see some specific pieces of art. After seeing the movie The Monuments Men, we wanted to see some of the works that had been recovered. If you haven’t seen the movie let me give a very brief summary. During World War II, Hitler had the Nazis plunder thousands of pieces of art and hide them so that Hitler could build a great museum at the end of the war. The United States sent a special unit which included trained artists and architects to find the art and recover it. The members of that military unit were known as The Monuments Men.  Much of the art was recovered from salt mines in Europe where it had been hidden. The salt mines turned out to be an excellent storage place with regard to light and humidity.  Rembrandt’s Night Watch was one of the pieces that was stolen and then recovered by the Monuments Men. It was truly amazing!! It was a very large painting.

It was impossible to get a picture without tourists in the way. The person on the right side of the photo is using one of the art guides that we liked so much.

The life size painting above was one of our favorites.

I was quite taken with this elaborately carved frame.

This elaborate dollhouse was a model of a canal house complete with china, silver, copper pots and artwork. Reportedly it cost as much as a real canal house.

This was an interesting display of Delftware. Let’s take a closer look.

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the Rijks Museum and highly recommend it.  On a more somber note, we visited the Anne Frank House. No photography was allowed inside that museum. It was very interesting and did a good job portraying the heart-breaking story of Anne Frank. It is a not-to-be-missed landmark in Amsterdam. Since I’m a rule follower, I did not try to take photos inside but I found a photo online of the toilet in the Anne Frank house.It was delft and I had to share it.

We were not able to go to the Corrie Ten Boom house on this trip. It is located in Haarlem, Holland which is a short train ride from Amsterdam. I have heard that it is a great site to visit also.

This wraps up my posts for Amsterdam. My next post on the trip will be about the places we visited in Belgium.

Linking to Wow Us Wednesday at Savvy Southern Style. Click the link for lots of inspiration.