This is a museum that may be unknown to many who are not art connoisseurs. To help put you upto speed, this is the museum that was featured in the hit Hollywood movie starring Ben Stiller, ‘Night at the museum’. The scenes that played out in the movie includes the Dutch navy admirals strutting with their ceremonial swords drawn by their waist or the children who were gleefully smoking from pipes and helping themselves to stroopwafels. What may come as a surprise to many is that this museum is one that is laden with rich history that even the most knowledgeable amongst you, might have missed out on the private tour of Rijksmuseum.
- There Is An Actual Road Through The Museum
Believe it or not, this is the only museum that has an actual road running right through it! The reason for this can be traced back to the need of the museum to be linked to the important historical sites in the city. However, the road could only be constructed at the edge of the city. Till the year 1931, you could take a car and drive it right into the museum; nowadays that has been limited to bicycles. Smart thinking.
- There Is Armour That Seems To Be Missing A Leg
A walk through the museum will lead you to a peculiar piece that has an armour leg brace missing. At first thoughts, you would think that the museum care-taker messed up and left the other leg at the cafeteria. But surprisingly that is not the case; the armour belonged to Admiral Jacob Van Heemskerck who has heroically died in the 1607 battle of Gibraltar. The missing leg was well, because he actually lost his leg in the battle.
- Time Seems To Slow Near Stroopwafel
A look at Jan Steen’s painting at the Rijksmuseum will tell you how, Dutch delicacies has changed very little. The bottom left of the painting will showcase a basket of the famous Dutch delicacy, namely the Stroopwafel which looks erringly same as the ones you would get nowadays-this painting was done in the 17th century, by the way.
- The Museum Had Its Shutters On For 9 Years
This was a case of bad decision making from the engineers responsible for the renovation of the museum in 2003. An unfortunate digging of a tunnel under the road mentioned earlier, made way for water to flood from a nearby canal. The museum was completely flooded as a result and this broke the financial budget causing it to take more than 9 years for the originally planned restoration to be completed.
These might be the things that your guide might have missed during the Rijksmuseum tour!