By Ines Keane
Start with the claim that is easiest to test. Teylers Museum says, on its own website, that it is the oldest museum in the Netherlands and that it has been open to the public continuously since 1784. That is the museum’s account of itself.
Where it sits
Haarlem is the capital of the province of North Holland, on the river Spaarne.
Dates in order
- 23 November 1245: Count Willem II grants Haarlem city rights, according to Wikipedia.
- 1270: the first city walls, built after a siege from Kennemerland, according to Wikipedia.
- 1328: a fire severely damages the church on the Grote Markt; rebuilding takes more than 150 years, according to Wikipedia.
- 1351: a fire destroys the earlier city hall; a new one is built on ground given by the count, according to Wikipedia.
- 1609: the Old Men’s Almshouse, a hofje, is founded, according to Wikipedia’s Frans Hals Museum entry.
- 1778: Pieter Teyler van der Hulst dies; his will leads to the museum, according to Teylers’ own site.
- 1784: the Oval Room opens to visitors, according to Teylers’ own site.
- 1862: the municipal museum is founded as the Stedelijk Museum van Haarlem, according to Wikipedia.
- 1913: that museum moves into the former almshouse and takes the name Frans Hals Museum, according to Wikipedia.
Teylers Museum
Two sources, and they do not say quite the same thing. The museum’s own site calls the building the oldest museum in the Netherlands and says the Oval Room, designed by Leendert Viervant and completed in 1784 in Teyler’s backyard, has stayed virtually unchanged since. It says Teyler lived in the Pieter Teyler House from 1740 until his death in 1778, and that five directors of the Teylers Foundation began the museum after he died. It also lists a physics laboratory fitted out in 1790 for the first director, Martinus van Marum, which the site calls the first physics lab in the Netherlands.
The building grew in stages. The museum’s site gives a wing of 1826 with lecture rooms, a geology collection and a reading room, and a monumental facade on the Spaarne designed by Christian Ulrich, with the interior by Adrianus van der Steur Jr., called the New Museum in 1885. Wikipedia’s article dates Ulrich’s design to 1878 and the opening to 1885. A modern wing by Hubert-Jan Henket followed in 1996. The Oval Room was restored in 2010 to 2011, and the Pieter Teyler House reopened to the public in 2022, according to the museum.
Roam first. Shop later.