Welcome to Leiden, a town rich in opportunities for intellectual exploration and home to the oldest university in the Netherlands. I’ve explored the city more broadly in other posts, but now it’s time to zoom in on Leiden’s nerdy side and take trips to the Hortus Botanicus Leiden and the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities. If you’re the kind of traveler who prefers ancient artifacts to souvenir shops, and who would rather hunt for a rare orchid than party into the wee hours, you won’t want to miss this Leiden museum and garden duo.

Hortus Botanicus Leiden

Welcome to the oldest botanical garden in the Netherlands, and one of the oldest formal botanical gardens in the world. Founded in 1590 as a garden for the medical students at Leiden University, the Hortus Botanicus quickly flourished under the leadership of renowned botanist Carolus Clusius. What you see above is the part of the garden that still follows Clusius’s original 1594 layout.

The garden has evolved tremendously since the days of Clusius, of course, though he remains rightly famous for having brought the first tulip bulb to the Netherlands from Turkey. The collection has expanded from around 100 plants to over 10,000 — including one of the largest collections of Asian orchids in the world.

Inside the Tropical Glasshouse

Side note: where labeling was clear, I’ve given precise genus and species names in this post. Unfortunately, as happens at many botanical gardens — and especially in greenhouses — it wasn’t always possible to tell which orchid was which. But I can tell you that they cultivate a whopping 6,000 tropical orchids, most of which are kept at a closed offsite location.

All of these orchids in the photos above, though, reside in the garden’s Tropical Glasshouse. The Hortus has been in the tropical plant collection business since the early seventeenth century, when it began taking advantage of the Dutch presence in Southeast Asia. (The Dutch East India Company, or VOC, controlled vast swaths of what are now Indonesia, Malaysia, and neighboring regions, creating a complicated legacy for the gardens that it acknowledges in some of its signage.) The current glasshouse replicates multiple tropical environments so it can play host to a wide range of plants.

Small Garden, Impressive Diversity

Beyond the glasshouse, the Hortus Botanicus is relatively small for a botanical garden: it’s only three acres from tip to tail. But they’ve worked to fit a lot into that small space — here’s the official garden map.

Among other features, you’ll find a Japanese garden (many of the plants here arrived thanks to the efforts of Philipp Franz von Siebold, one of the few Europeans allowed into Japan in the early 19th century)…

… a working apiary …

… and a fascinating “Systematic Garden,” in which plants are grouped by family, so you can see the ways in which various plant groups are related.

The signage is super-wordy, but that’s understandable in a university garden.

Blooms & Boughs

You can learn a lot here if you take your time — or you can just sit on a bench and read, or admire whatever plants might be flowering during your visit.

Don’t forget to look up! Some of the trees here have been around since the 1700s, and the collection is both beautiful and diverse.

A Living Laboratory: The Hortus as a Research Garden

The Hortus Botanicus is, as its website proclaims, a botanical museum. Over the centuries, it has attracted scientists from around the world, including taxonomist Carl Linnaeus (though his work has recently come under critical scrutiny in the Pulitzer Prize–winning book Every Living Thing by Jason Roberts).

Herman Boerhaave, an 18th-century medical professor and pioneer of clinical teaching, used the garden’s plants so extensively that Peter the Great of Russia paid him a visit. Other botanists and professors—such as Georg Eberhard Rumphius and Adriaan van Royen—helped expand the Hortus collection and solidify its status as a center of botanical research.

And that work has continued; today, Leiden University researchers are using Hortus plants for everything from DNA research to seed exchanges that promote global plant biodiversity.

Visit Tips for the Hortus Botanicus Leiden

• The Hortus is open daily, with the exception of October 3 and the week between December 25 and January 1.
• Check the website for hours, which vary seasonally.
• While you can visit year-round, you’ll have the most luck seeing flowers in bloom between April and September.
• There is an entrance fee, and adults will save €0.50 by purchasing a ticket online.
• I would allot at least an hour and a half for your visit — more if you want to read all of the signs or sit out on the grassy rampart with a book.
• The garden has both a café and a shop.
• If you really want to geek out on plants, check out the garden’s Crown Jewels and Plant Finder pages.
• Family Tip: With secret hiding places under shrubs, winding paths, and fluttering insects, the Hortus is a great place for kids. Plus, it offers a wide array of children’s activities.

If you love a garden with a greenhouse, don’t miss the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, a true Victorian gem.

Dutch National Museum of Antiquities (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden)

In 1743, Leiden University received a bequest of 150 antiquities. In 1818, those pieces came under the care of Caspar Reuvens, who had just been appointed the world’s first professor of archaeology by the king of the Netherlands, William I. With government support, Reuvens quickly began acquiring additional pieces to expand his small collection — and he soon had a museum on his hands. Thus was born the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities, or the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden.

The museum has come a long way since those first 150 pieces — it now displays some of its 14,000 objects in a three-story, state-of-the-art space in central Leiden. They even built an entire room just to house the Temple of Taffeh, shown above — a gift from Egypt to the Netherlands. It was given as thanks for the Dutch role in a UNESCO-led effort to save important temples endangered by the Nile flooding caused by the building of the Aswan Dam.

Along the Nile: Egypt & Nubia

The museum is roughly divided into geographic areas, with Egypt, Greece, and the Netherlands taking up the most real estate. Egypt takes pride of place on the first floor, with multiple rooms that engage visitors thematically (e.g., How did ancient Egyptians treat their dead? How did they express themselves using hieroglyphs?). The objects on display are impressive.

If you’re wondering, “is that a turquoise blue oil lamp with a man sleeping on his own penis?” the answer is “yes.” Oil lamps like this were either inspired by the Egyptian god Bes, known for his grotesque appearance, or by the Roman belief that phalluses could be powerful amulets against dark forces. This lamp is from the Roman Imperial Period in Egypt.

That lamp is a good example of one of the museum pieces that was signed only in Dutch, which pretty much only happened in the Egypt exhibit. More frustrating were the pieces that had no signage at all, though this wasn’t common. Overall, the museum does a great job of providing well-curated signage in both Dutch and English.

Pro tip: don’t miss the drawers in the room that covers early explorations and Egyptology. Why? First of all, I love that drawers in a museum let you find things entirely on your own. And secondly, you’ll learn even more by looking inside (for example, you’ll get a glimpse of reproductions of drawings made by the artists that Napoleon sent along when he tried to conquer Egypt in the last years of the 1700s).

Mediterranean Treasures: Greece, Rome & Etruria

The Greek and Roman section on the second floor felt a bit less extensive, though there’s still plenty to admire.

In this Greek area, I was most interested in the way in which they used artifacts to explore each of the gods and their characteristics.

When you head to the museum’s top story, you’ll find more Greek and Roman pieces — though here, the Romans dominate.

One of my favorite pieces here was the green unguentarium, made to hold oils or perfumes. It’s an elegant example of Roman lampworking, a glass manipulation technique, and I’m amazed that such a delicate piece has survived the centuries.

One very interesting room explores different regional styles of ancient Greece. For example, there are luxury trade goods decorated with fierce large cats from Corinth …

… complex geometric patterns on vessels from Athens …

… pitchers painted with local ibexes and eastern griffins from Ionia …

… and small terracotta figurines from Boeotia (the school group I unintentionally followed was delighted by the ape riding a horse).

We may not always think of them in the same breath as ancient Greece and Rome, but the Etruscans — a civilization that inhabited Italy before being absorbed by the Roman Empire — were famous for their terracotta sculptures, metalworking, and pottery.

It’s hard for me to keep my eyes off the jar-man with moveable arms … apparently, this was a common form for holding cremated remains.

Empires & Mountain Cultures: The Near East

This part of the museum is much smaller, but I loved the tight and well-explained displays that walk visitors through objects from present day Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and more. You’ll find works from empires, civilizations, and peoples including the Sassanids …

… the Persians …

… the Assyrians …

… peoples from the mountain region of Luristan …

… and also from the nearby Amlash region.

These wide-spouted beakers, which were probably used for ritual purposes rather than daily ones, really make me smile.

Antiquities from the Swamps and Dunes: The Netherlands

You might not think “Antiquities” and “the Netherlands” in the same breath, but there have been people living here for many thousands of years. The museum has laid its Dutch pieces out over two different sections of the museum. You’ll first encounter the Netherlands in Roman Times exhibit in the atrium of the second floor.

I’m a huge fan of the mystery dodecahedrons that they found in a grave site, mostly because I like museum pieces that invite our curiosity.

You’ll find a much more extensive look at Dutch history and civilization in Archaeology of the Netherlands. This large exhibit is tucked into a corner on the museum’s top story. You’ll likely encounter it last, which is a shame — it’s fantastic, but people are so tired by this point that they tend to fly through it.

This whole exhibit is excellent. You’ll start with the fun, choose-your-own-adventure Archeologie Uit Je Achtertuin (Archaeology From Your Backyard) wall, where you can open up small drawers labeled by Dutch region and see what’s inside.

Beyond these drawers, the Dutch exhibit halls are roughly divided into two sections. First you’ll find a temporary exhibit of things made out of tin, such as spoons and knives, candlesticks, things made out of pewter …

… and tiny miniatures, often produced for dollhouses.

For an English-language look at what’s going on in this exhibit, make sure to pick up a paper flyer from the stand at the start at the exhibit.

The Netherlands Through the Ages

Then come displays of seventy-five archaeological sites, where you can see over 300,000 years of Dutch history. These take you all the way from flint objects that were used over 10,000 years ago …

… to gold from the Early Middle Ages …

… to a trove of goods from The Fisherman tavern in Vlaardingen, which date to the late eighteenth century. These were all found in the tavern’s cesspit!

Carl Reuvens would be impressed by how far his museum has come. I’ve visited my fair share of archaeological museums, from London to Turin, and Leiden stands out for being compact, well-explained, and filled with surprisingly interesting Dutch stuff. If you’re looking to learn more about the ancient world, you shouldn’t miss this spot.

Visit Tips for the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities

• The museum is open daily from 10:00-5:00, plus Thursday evenings.
• There is an entrance fee; you can buy tickets online or at the door.
• Allow at least two hours for your visit — two and a half if you want to make the most of the experience. If you’re short on time, I would start with Egypt, take a look at the Middle East, and then go up to the Archaeology of the Netherlands.
• The museum has both a café and a bookshop.
• Want to do a deep dive into the museum’s collection from home? Their exhibitions website is text-heavy but easy to navigate and educational.
• Family Tip: Kids will have a great time here — when I visited, the museum offered crafting activities inside the Temple Hall, children’s audio tours, and treasure hunt booklets available for purchase at the ticket counter.

Looking to learn more about Leiden? Check out this post for fun facts about the city!