★★★★★ 5.0
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Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
That giant white bathtub floating in the air weighs 627 tons, but it only touches the old brick museum at TWO tiny spots! The Stedelijk Museum's famous "Bathtub" extension hovers 8 meters high - that's like stacking four giraffes! In 1938, director Willem Sandberg literally painted over the museum's fancy colorful staircase with white paint, creating one of the world's FIRST white gallery spaces. The bathtub's walls are made from special space-age fibers that never expand or shrink, no matter how hot or cold it gets! This is the very first museum on Museumplein with its entrance actually facing the square - can you spot where the glass walls make the park seem to flow right inside? The old building from 1895 and the floating bathtub from 2012 are like time-traveling best friends, showing off 117 years of Amsterdam's wild imagination!
Did You Know?
- The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam was originally founded in 1895 thanks to a major donation from Sophia Adriana de Bruyn, a wealthy widow and art collector, whose passion for contemporary art led to the creation of a public collection—making it one of the first museums in the world dedicated to modern and contemporary art, a radical concept at the time.
- The museum’s striking modern extension, nicknamed 'The Bathtub' due to its white, curvaceous form, was designed by Benthem Crouwel Architects and opened in 2012; this bold architectural addition houses experimental art and video installations, creating a dramatic contrast with the original 19th-century Neo-Renaissance building designed by Adriaan Willem Weissman.
- A hidden feature of the museum is the 17th-century warship weathervane atop the old building’s tower, salvaged from a chimney of the former Admiralty building; this artifact is a subtle but lasting reminder of Amsterdam’s colonial past and the museum’s complex historical ties to wealth generated through Dutch colonial trade.