Museum Willet-Holthuysen

Frommer's Review

This museum affords another rare opportunity to visit an elegant 17th-century canal house with an ornamental garden. This house, built in 1687, was renovated several times before its last owner, Mrs. Willet-Holthuysen, willed her mansion and all its contents, including a fine-arts collection, to the city in 1885. Its various owner and servant quarters together tell a kind of Dutch Upstairs, Downstairs tale, allowing you to compare the glittering lifestyles of the wealthy and the ordinary folk who took care of them. Among the most interesting rooms: a Victorian-era bedroom on the second floor, a large reception room with tapestry wall panels, and an 18th-century basement kitchen that's still so completely furnished and functional you could swear the cook had merely stepped out to go shopping.

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