Culture & history

Leiden: rich cultural life 

Leiden has a beautiful old city centre with many canals and nearly 3.000 historic buildings, including Holland’s oldest theatre. It boasts 10 world-class museums with permanent and temporary exhibitions on antiquity, the arts, nature, science and anthropology.  
 

From Rembrandt to Von Siebold

The world-famous painter Rembrandt was born in Leiden. This is where he learnt his craft and developed his renowned light and dark technique. In 2006 the city celebrated the 400th anniversary of his birth with a variety of exhibitions and events.

Leiden’s reputation for tolerance and special relations with great powers goes back centuries. Scientists of international fame - such as Boerhaave, Ehrenfest, Einstein, Kamerlingh Onnes, Lorentz and Zeeman – have always felt at home in the city.

Von Siebold, medical doctor and scientist, was responsible for initiating the relations between the city and Japan and other Asian countries.

Leiden is proud of the recently refurbished Siebold House, the fruit of collaboration between the Dutch and Japanese governments, and now a museum on Japan - past & present. 
 

Pilgrim Fathers 

Leiden is also known as a city of refugees. It welcomed the Pilgrim Fathers, for example, and this explains the close links it has with the United States to this day. 
 

Setting

Leiden is situated in the middle of typically Dutch landscape, close to the dunes and beaches of the North Sea coast, to the postcard-worthy and internationally renowned bulb fields and to the large lakes in the green heart of the country.