Stedelijk (Municipal) Museum Het Prinsenhof

The Prinsenhof (Prince's Court), on the banks of Delft's oldest canal, Oude Delft, dates from the late 1400s and was originally a convent. This is where William I of Orange (William the Silent) lived from 1572 and had his headquarters in the years when he helped found the Dutch Republic, and where an assassin's bullets ended his life in 1584 (you can see a pair of bullet holes from the fusillade that felled him in the stairwell). The interior William would have known has been recreated, and a museum preserves the record of Dutch struggles to throw off the yoke of Spanish occupation between 1568 and 1648. There are impressive tapestries, silverware, pottery, and paintings -- among the latter are five other versions of the View of Delft, painted by contemporaries of Vermeer.

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