Boerhaave in Leiden: five centuries of science behind a former monastery
From Van Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes to a qubit, Rijksmuseum Boerhaave connects historic instruments with questions of today.
Rijksmuseum Boerhaave in Leiden is the Dutch national museum of science and medicine. Its present home is a former monastery founded in 1414; the museum opened to the public there in 1991. In the eighteenth century, its namesake Herman Boerhaave taught students at patients’ bedsides here. The building is therefore part of the story itself.
Rijksmuseum Boerhaave brings five centuries of research together. Among roughly 126,000 objects and documents are microscopes made by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, Christiaan Huygens’s first pendulum clock and an early heliocentric planetarium. Physics and astronomy appear alongside medicine.
More recent developments have a place too. The collection page lists the first administered COVID-19 vaccine, a qubit as a building block of a quantum computer, an artificial pancreas and data from the first image of a black hole. The museum’s collecting policy focuses on developments since 1900, including information technology and medical equipment.
The museum suggests that visitors start at the Anatomical Theatre. There, a seven-minute introductory film is about curiosity, courage, creativity and perseverance. The permanent displays then take visitors through the explosion of knowledge around the telescope and changes in medicine from bloodletting to transplants, among other subjects.
On 14 October, Waarheid? Kunst van de twijfel is on view; the museum website dates it from 24 April 2026 through 3 January 2027. The exhibition brings scientific objects together with artworks and explores how we decide what is true. Protocols of Becoming is also on the exhibition list, from 11 September 2026 through 14 March 2027.
The museum is at Lange St. Agnietenstraat 10, 2312 WC Leiden. Its visitor page lists daily opening from 10 am to 5 pm. For the autumn school holiday, the museum lists activities for the northern region from 10 through 18 October, and for the central and southern regions from 17 through 25 October. According to the activities page, the listed workshops cost nothing extra.
According to the museum website, an adult ticket costs €17.50, with a €1 discount for online purchase. For children aged four through seventeen, the listed price is €7, also with a €1 online discount; Museumkaart holders enter free. Checked on 12 October 2026. Consult the ticket page shortly before a visit.