Amsterdam (Rough Guide) - Martin Dunford [42]
One block east along Berenstraat stands the Felix Meritis building, at Keizersgracht 324. A Neoclassical monolith dating to 1787, the mansion was built to house a science and arts society, which was the cultural focus of the city’s upper crust for nearly one hundred years. Dutch cultural aspirations did not, however, impress everyone. It’s said that when Napoleon visited Amsterdam the entire building was redecorated for his reception, only to have him stalk out in disgust, claiming that the place stank of tobacco. Oddly enough, it later became the headquarters of the Dutch Communist Party, but they sold it to the council, which now leases it to the Felix Meritis Foundation (www.felix.meritis.nl), which hosts a mix of conferences and concerts with a pan-European theme.
The Grachtengordel | Grachtengordel west |
The Cromhouthuizen and the Bijbels Museum
A row of five houses at Herengracht 361–369 is an excellent spot to compare and contrast the main types of gable: stepped at no. 361, bell at nos. 365 and 367 and neck at no. 369, and there’s more handsome architecture across the canal at Herengracht 364–370, where the graceful and commanding Cromhouthuizen consist of four matching stone mansions. These are embellished with tendrils, garlands and scrollwork, and finessed by charming little bull’s-eye windows and elegant neck gables. Built in the 1660s for one of Amsterdam’s wealthy merchant families, the Cromhouts, the houses were designed by Philip Vingboons (1607–78), the most inventive of the architects who worked on the Grachtengordel during the city’s expansion. As a Catholic, Vingboons was confined to private commissions – inconvenient no doubt, but at a time when Protestants and Catholics were at each other’s throats right across Europe, hardly insufferable.
Two of the houses have been adapted to hold the Bijbels Museum (Bible Museum; Mon–Sat 10am–5pm, Sun 11am–5pm; €7.50; www.bijbelsmuseum.nl) and these still exhibit several decorative flourishes from their original function as homes for the rich. The best examples are on the ground floor behind the museum entrance, and comprise a striking spiral staircase and a painted ceiling of classical gods and goddesses by Jacob de Wit. You’ll spot these at the end of a visit to the museum, which begins on Floor 3 (the top floor), where there’s a large and detailed nineteenth-century model of the Tabernacle, the portable sanctuary in which the Israelites carried their holy of holies, the Ark of the Covenant. Attempts to reconstruct biblical scenes were something of a cottage industry in the Netherlands in the late 1800s, with scores of Dutch antiquarians beavering away, Bible in one hand and modelling equipment in the other, but the creator of this particular model, a Protestant vicar by the name of Leendert Schouten (1828–1905), went one step further, making it his lifetime’s work. It was a good move; Schouten became a well-known figure and his model proved a popular attraction, drawing hundreds of visitors to his home. Schouten also assembled an interesting assortment of Middle Eastern archeological finds dating from the period when the Israelites were in exile in Egypt, and these are displayed on the third floor too.
Floor 2 sticks to a similar theme, with the main exhibit being a large and detailed model of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, made at the end of the nineteenth century when Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. A short film explores the history of the Temple Mount too. There are yet more models of the Temple on Floor 1, one at the time of Herod, another of when Solomon was king, and a small “Aroma Cabinet” of Biblical fragrances – palm, almond and so forth. There’s also an outstanding collection of antique Bibles in the cellar, the most important of these being the official Statenvertaling (literally State’s Translation), published in 1637. Key to the development of Dutch Protestantism, the Statenvertaling was the result of years of study by the leading scholars of the Netherlands, who returned to the