Haarlem
The oldest museum and the oldest hofje in the Netherlands, a quarter of an hour from Amsterdam
- When to go
- October 13° · 16 rainy days
- Per day
- €€€€price 4 of 5
- How many days
- 1days
- For you
- 6 questions →
- Nearest airport
- 12 km Amsterdam · 49 km Rotterdam
- Right now
Haarlem is fifteen minutes from Amsterdam by train and a good base instead of it: the tourist tax here is a fixed amount per person per night, not 12.5 per cent of the room rate as in Amsterdam. The town itself takes a day, all of it on foot from the station: the square, two museums and the hofjes.
Begin at the Grote Markt. The square holds the old meat hall, built in 1603, and the Sint-Bavo church, where Frans Hals is buried.
Inside is the organ Christian Müller built in 1738. Mozart played it in 1766, aged ten, and it is still played: from late May to early October the city holds an evening recital on it once a week. If you are here in those months, the church is where the day can end.
Teylers is the oldest museum in the Netherlands. Its Oval Room opened in 1784 and has hardly changed since. The minerals are still arranged as they were in the eighteenth century, next to Martinus van Marum's electrostatic generator from the same year.
The largest collection of Hals's work is in the Frans Hals Museum, housed in an almshouse from 1609. In 1664, in his eighties, Hals painted the regents and regentesses who ran it, and both portraits hang in the building today. The museums close on Mondays while the church and the Hofje van Bakenes stay open; on Sundays it is the other way round. So give a Monday to the square and the hofjes, and a Sunday to the museums.
The hofjes are enclosed courtyards of small houses, endowed for the poor, most often older women. Haarlem has over twenty and most are still lived in; the oldest in the country, the Hofje van Bakenes of 1395, is open Monday to Saturday, 10:00–17:00. You go in quietly, through an unremarkable street door — these are people's homes.
What to see in Haarlem
Sint-Bavo
Entry €4, Monday to Saturday 10:00–17:00; the church is closed on Sundays.
The Teylers Museum
Admission €18.50, Tuesday to Sunday 10:00–17:00. Beyond the Oval Room is the fossil collection, with an Archaeopteryx specimen.
The Frans Hals Museum
Admission €18.50, Tuesday to Sunday 11:00–17:00. On the Groot Heiligland, half a kilometre south of the Grote Markt.
The De Adriaan windmill
The original of 1779 burned down in 1932; today's is a reconstruction opened in 2002. The guided visit takes 45 minutes, admission €5.
Zandvoort
A North Sea beach, ten minutes by train from Haarlem station.
Keukenhof
From mid-March to early May, bus 850 runs from Haarlem station to the gardens at Lisse in 35–40 minutes, through the bulb fields.
Two things you probably did not know
Harlem in New York is named after this town: Dutch settlers called their new settlement on Manhattan Nieuw Haarlem in 1658. The original is five centuries older than the copy.
In the Middle Ages Haarlem had over a hundred breweries, because people drank beer instead of water that was not safe. Fifteenth-century recipes are brewed again today in a church converted into a brewery.
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