Rainy day and kids with energy to burn? These are the museums that work for families: hands-on science, old trams, picture books you can step into, and art kids can get close to. Some are in the center, some are by the beach, and a few make an easy day out of town. Check each card for ages and what to book ahead.
The national archaeology museum of the Netherlands. Its central hall holds the Temple of Taffeh, a real Egyptian temple taken apart in Egypt and rebuilt here.
Galleries cover Egypt, the Near East, Greece, the Etruscans, Rome and the Netherlands from prehistory to the Middle Ages, with mummies, sarcophagi, imperial statues and ancient jewelry. Replicas, film clips and interactive displays help kids follow along.
Naturalis is the Dutch national museum of natural history, and a research institute too. Its galleries run from Life, which climbs from the depths of the ocean to a mountaintop, to Dinosaur age, home to Trix the T. rex, plus Ice age, Earth, Evolution and the forest of Suriname.
On the ground floor, LiveScience lets kids watch researchers and collection managers at work.
Royal Delft is the last of the 17th-century earthenware factories in Delft still making Delft Blue by hand. Kids watch master painters at work, walk through the factory from the first clay to the final brushstroke, and see the tulip pyramid and royal collection in the museum rooms. Extras include a tile-painting workshop, a children's treasure hunt and a kids' audio tour.
TU Delft Science Centre is the university's science center on the Delft campus. Its exhibition is closed while a new one is built, so visits run through booked programs. In the Tech Studio, a child and one adult work as a pair: programming a MIRTE robot built at TU Delft, turning recycled plastic into a spinner, or designing imaginary creatures inspired by the ARIA artwork in the entrance hall.
Museum Voorlinden is a private museum of modern and contemporary art, built around the Caldic Collection, which includes works by Yayoi Kusama, Ron Mueck, Louise Bourgeois and James Turrell.
It sits on a country estate by the Wassenaar dunes, with gardens by Piet Oudolf and woods, meadows and water to walk after the galleries. The Clingenbosch sculpture garden nearby holds more than sixty modern sculptures.
The Mauritshuis is a 17th-century palace on the Hofvijver pond, beside the Binnenhof, filled with Dutch and Flemish Old Masters. Kids can stand in front of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, Fabritius' Goldfinch and Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.
The galleries are intimate rooms with damask wallpaper, chandeliers and painted ceilings, and over 200 masterpieces are on show.
The Prison Gate was the entrance to the castle of the Counts of Holland, then for centuries a prison. A museum since 1882, it holds old cells and the largest collection of punishment and torture instruments in the Netherlands.
In the courthouse exhibition, kids feel how heavy a leg block is, see how thumbscrews work, and end the visit playing judge.
The museum fills the Frans Halsstraat tram depot, built in 1906 and used by the city's tram company until 1983. Inside stand about 30 trams that all served the city between 1905 and 1993, plus changing exhibitions drawn from its photo archive.
More than 100 volunteers restore the trams and drive them, and visitors can ride one on a round trip through the city.
Museum Beelden aan Zee is a sculpture museum built into the dunes of Scheveningen, beneath the 1826 Pavilion Von Wied, with a view of the sea. Inside are changing exhibitions and a rotating selection from the collection, from small figures to monumental pieces.
Outside are sculpture terraces and patios, and on the boulevard 23 fairy-tale sculptures by Tom Otterness fill a large outdoor terrace.
Muzee tells the story of Scheveningen's fishing village and seaside resort from inside an 1877 school building. Kids can walk through a replica of an old village street, look over model ships from the fishing fleet, and see the straw beach chairs of early beach days.
The sea hall holds hundreds of shells, crabs, deep-sea squids and fossils millions of years old. The guides are former fishermen.
The Children's Book Museum shares the Royal Library building with the Museum of Literature. Kids play inside book worlds: treasure hunting with Bear and pie baking with Pig in I am Frog, from Max Velthuijs's books, or roaming Papiria to beat the Ink Gobbler and write their own story, poem or comic. Under-7s get The Storytime Tent and the clamber-and-play ABC with the Animals and Me.
More than 120 prints by M.C. Escher hang in the former winter palace of Queen Emma on Lange Voorhout, from Day and Night to the seven-meter Metamorphosis III.
Kids get the most from the second floor, "Through Escher's Eyes": they turn giant or tiny in a few seconds, make their own tessellation, play with impossible figures and walk an Op-art room where the artworks seem to move.
The Louwman Museum holds more than 275 rare and iconic automobiles, from the first motorized vehicles to designs far ahead of their time, plus car posters, sculptures, trophies and miniatures.
Kids get a free printed treasure hunt and pen on arrival: each answer found in the halls gives a letter toward a hidden word, and a solved sheet earns a small gift at the museum shop.
Panorama Mesdag is a rotunda built around one painting: a 360-degree view of the sea, beach, dunes and fishing village of Scheveningen, 114.5 meters around and 14.6 meters high, the largest painting in the Netherlands. Kids climb a spiral staircase above an artificial dune to see it as if standing on Scheveningen's highest dune in 1881.
Side galleries show more work by Hendrik Willem Mesdag and Sientje Mesdag-van Houten.
An art museum in a Berlage building, with daylit galleries of modern art, fashion and applied arts, and as many as 300 works by Piet Mondrian.
Kids head for Chambers of Wonder (Wonderkamers): in pairs, with a tablet, they play a game through themed rooms, dance with Mondrian and reach a maze where they design their own room. A kids' audio tour covers 40 works, from Monet to Van Gogh.
Museon-Omniversum pairs a hands-on museum with the Dome, a giant-screen film theater. The One Planet Expo walks kids through the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals with interactive exhibits, while themed rooms and changing exhibitions cover nature, culture and science, drawn from a collection of over 90,000 objects.
It sits next to the Kunstmuseum in Zorgvliet. Under-4s are welcome but need more guidance at the exhibits.
Rainy day and kids with energy to burn? These are the museums that work for families: hands-on science, old trams, picture books you can step into, and art kids can get close to. Some are in the center, some are by the beach, and a few make an easy day out of town. Check each card for ages and what to book ahead.
The national archaeology museum of the Netherlands. Its central hall holds the Temple of Taffeh, a real Egyptian temple taken apart in Egypt and rebuilt here.
Galleries cover Egypt, the Near East, Greece, the Etruscans, Rome and the Netherlands from prehistory to the Middle Ages, with mummies, sarcophagi, imperial statues and ancient jewelry. Replicas, film clips and interactive displays help kids follow along.
Naturalis is the Dutch national museum of natural history, and a research institute too. Its galleries run from Life, which climbs from the depths of the ocean to a mountaintop, to Dinosaur age, home to Trix the T. rex, plus Ice age, Earth, Evolution and the forest of Suriname.
On the ground floor, LiveScience lets kids watch researchers and collection managers at work.
Royal Delft is the last of the 17th-century earthenware factories in Delft still making Delft Blue by hand. Kids watch master painters at work, walk through the factory from the first clay to the final brushstroke, and see the tulip pyramid and royal collection in the museum rooms. Extras include a tile-painting workshop, a children's treasure hunt and a kids' audio tour.
TU Delft Science Centre is the university's science center on the Delft campus. Its exhibition is closed while a new one is built, so visits run through booked programs. In the Tech Studio, a child and one adult work as a pair: programming a MIRTE robot built at TU Delft, turning recycled plastic into a spinner, or designing imaginary creatures inspired by the ARIA artwork in the entrance hall.
Museum Voorlinden is a private museum of modern and contemporary art, built around the Caldic Collection, which includes works by Yayoi Kusama, Ron Mueck, Louise Bourgeois and James Turrell.
It sits on a country estate by the Wassenaar dunes, with gardens by Piet Oudolf and woods, meadows and water to walk after the galleries. The Clingenbosch sculpture garden nearby holds more than sixty modern sculptures.
The Mauritshuis is a 17th-century palace on the Hofvijver pond, beside the Binnenhof, filled with Dutch and Flemish Old Masters. Kids can stand in front of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, Fabritius' Goldfinch and Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.
The galleries are intimate rooms with damask wallpaper, chandeliers and painted ceilings, and over 200 masterpieces are on show.
The Prison Gate was the entrance to the castle of the Counts of Holland, then for centuries a prison. A museum since 1882, it holds old cells and the largest collection of punishment and torture instruments in the Netherlands.
In the courthouse exhibition, kids feel how heavy a leg block is, see how thumbscrews work, and end the visit playing judge.
The museum fills the Frans Halsstraat tram depot, built in 1906 and used by the city's tram company until 1983. Inside stand about 30 trams that all served the city between 1905 and 1993, plus changing exhibitions drawn from its photo archive.
More than 100 volunteers restore the trams and drive them, and visitors can ride one on a round trip through the city.
Museum Beelden aan Zee is a sculpture museum built into the dunes of Scheveningen, beneath the 1826 Pavilion Von Wied, with a view of the sea. Inside are changing exhibitions and a rotating selection from the collection, from small figures to monumental pieces.
Outside are sculpture terraces and patios, and on the boulevard 23 fairy-tale sculptures by Tom Otterness fill a large outdoor terrace.
Muzee tells the story of Scheveningen's fishing village and seaside resort from inside an 1877 school building. Kids can walk through a replica of an old village street, look over model ships from the fishing fleet, and see the straw beach chairs of early beach days.
The sea hall holds hundreds of shells, crabs, deep-sea squids and fossils millions of years old. The guides are former fishermen.
The Children's Book Museum shares the Royal Library building with the Museum of Literature. Kids play inside book worlds: treasure hunting with Bear and pie baking with Pig in I am Frog, from Max Velthuijs's books, or roaming Papiria to beat the Ink Gobbler and write their own story, poem or comic. Under-7s get The Storytime Tent and the clamber-and-play ABC with the Animals and Me.
More than 120 prints by M.C. Escher hang in the former winter palace of Queen Emma on Lange Voorhout, from Day and Night to the seven-meter Metamorphosis III.
Kids get the most from the second floor, "Through Escher's Eyes": they turn giant or tiny in a few seconds, make their own tessellation, play with impossible figures and walk an Op-art room where the artworks seem to move.
The Louwman Museum holds more than 275 rare and iconic automobiles, from the first motorized vehicles to designs far ahead of their time, plus car posters, sculptures, trophies and miniatures.
Kids get a free printed treasure hunt and pen on arrival: each answer found in the halls gives a letter toward a hidden word, and a solved sheet earns a small gift at the museum shop.
Panorama Mesdag is a rotunda built around one painting: a 360-degree view of the sea, beach, dunes and fishing village of Scheveningen, 114.5 meters around and 14.6 meters high, the largest painting in the Netherlands. Kids climb a spiral staircase above an artificial dune to see it as if standing on Scheveningen's highest dune in 1881.
Side galleries show more work by Hendrik Willem Mesdag and Sientje Mesdag-van Houten.
An art museum in a Berlage building, with daylit galleries of modern art, fashion and applied arts, and as many as 300 works by Piet Mondrian.
Kids head for Chambers of Wonder (Wonderkamers): in pairs, with a tablet, they play a game through themed rooms, dance with Mondrian and reach a maze where they design their own room. A kids' audio tour covers 40 works, from Monet to Van Gogh.
Museon-Omniversum pairs a hands-on museum with the Dome, a giant-screen film theater. The One Planet Expo walks kids through the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals with interactive exhibits, while themed rooms and changing exhibitions cover nature, culture and science, drawn from a collection of over 90,000 objects.
It sits next to the Kunstmuseum in Zorgvliet. Under-4s are welcome but need more guidance at the exhibits.
