THE ULTIMATE DUTCH MUSEUMS TIERLIST ft a real Dutchman YouTube

So tell me, what is this JP? This is the ultimate Dutch Museum tier list. You heard him right folks, this is the ultimate Dutch Museum tier list. The ultimate Dutch Museum tier list. We just went on an odyssey throughout the Netherlands, pretty much everywhere, going to every major city, every major museum, and tons of little ones just scattered throughout. We've probably been to more Dutch Museums than most Dutchmen. Yes, we have absolutely seen everything. I've seen new things, and I've lived here for, well, basically all my life. Let me tell you folks, the museums here are absolutely amazing. I cannot get over the amazing stuff I've seen. Just absolutely phenomenal. If you love ancient history, fossils. Colonial history. Yeah, if you love awesome paintings, then this is the place for you. We got it all. Absolutely. And I'm not just saying that because a Dutchman has a gun to my head. So what are we starting off with JP? We're starting off with the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. The legendary, world famous Rijksmuseum, which I think, I personally think it's absolutely S tier. Let's go through it. This is the most grandiose museum I've ever been to. Absolutely. It's got Dutch history. It's got artifacts. It's got colonial history. All in one place. It has everything folks, and it's built like an absolute cathedral. It's enormous. What do you think the highlights are? That's difficult to pinpoint exactly. These are art pieces you've read about everywhere. You've seen them in history books, you've seen them on forums, you've seen them on your Wikipedia pages. Yeah, you can save a trip to the Van Gogh Museum because they have some too, but keep in mind that they and all the Vermeers and all the Rembrandts are all surrounded by a huge barrier of tourists. So all the pictures we have of them are from us taking them from the back of these huge hordes of tourists. And one of my pictures even had four people in front of me, just phones out, taking pictures of them. Yeah, it takes a while to get to the front. You've got to sort of nudge your way through. Weirdly the Monet's right next to the Van Gogh's aren't crowded at all though. And right next to that was this like impossibly photorealistic 19th century painting on a little bowl that I was just absolutely blown away by. But no one was looking at it. Also, the famous night watch is behind glass because it's being conserved at the moment, but that's sort of cool actually because you can see it as it's being conserved. So pretty cool. And there's way, way more stuff than just the Dutch old masters. It has an extremely diverse collection. Like for example, I think the most impressive historical relic they have is the stern of the Royal Charles, which is this ship that my man's hero, Michiel Ruyter, took from Britain. He was so ballsy. He sailed up the Thames and he absolutely smashed the English fleet right where it was moored. And he took back as a trophy, the English flagship. Absolutely insane. That's just a flex, isn't it? Yeah. One of the best and most underrated tacticians in human history. And there are paintings right next to the stern of this boat, which is over the door to the gallery depicting how it got there. Like it's insane. And there's way, way more stuff than that. Like there are these impossibly detailed little paper doilies made for the rich and famous, like made with microscopic precision back in the 17th century. And there are these relics from the only place that Europeans could go to in Japan while it was closed off for hundreds of years, which of course was only open to the Dutch. This little island off Nagasaki called Deshima, you can see a shimmering diamond the Dutch seized from some Southeast Asian sultan. Absolutely beautiful. There's this giant coin cabinet with the rarest coins in the world and this huge library, like five stories tall. There's this whole room filled with Napoleonic war booty, including like the most famous portrait of Napoleon as emperor. There's this cat I took a selfie with. You can see works by my favorite historical artist, Laurence Alma-Tedema, specifically about my favorite subject, ancient Egypt, and the way he got those details down. I thought that was almost impossible before I saw it. There's this beautiful medieval section on the ground floor with like groin-stabbing knives and all this amazing religious art. But my favorite piece, and the one I spent the most time looking at, was this hyper-detailed one at the end of the 16th century gallery of a typical Dutch town of the day with all these different scenes of peasants just like living daily life as they were putting on a little play. I think it's beautiful that one of the greatest painters of that time could just demonstrate how peaceful and how, well, in difficult times, basically things still have beauty. And he's perfectly captured that in his paintings, I think. Yeah, it has all these neat little scenes of daily life, mostly beer-related, of course. Beer-related and smoke-related. Yeah, yeah, like a monk drinking beer, a kid secretly gulping down beer, another kid giving some food secretly to a dog, people processing by with the same sort of religious statues that you see earlier on in the same gallery. It's amazing. Absolutely amazing. So how would you rate it, JP? Well, it's difficult to rate. It's one of the greatest museums of, well, basically everywhere, non-bias, of course. But it was very crowded. Because it's one of those big museums that is just one of those you've got to visit in your lifetime, a lot of people were there. And that kind of took away from the old Australians, for me. It feels like if it was a little bit less crowded, that would have been an easy S tier. But in its current state, I feel like I'd have to push it down to 18. Yeah, I agree with you on that. And next up, the Zeus Museum. It's this amazing, completely underrated little museum in this absolutely perfectly preserved 17th century city called Middelburg in the middle of Zeeland. It's absolutely amazing to look at, a must visit, even though it's not really on any tourist maps. Outside of the museum itself, Middelburg is definitely worth the visit. I might be a bit biased since I have some family there, but just the setting alone of the museum, the Abbey, that's a thousand, nearly thousand year old building. Yeah, it's right next to this insane medieval cloisters and it's within a medieval abbey. There's heaps of cool stuff there, ranging from colonial history to medieval history and even natural history. There was this ancient Egyptian mummy there that traveled all over the world in the 1700s. It went from India to Indonesia. To Norway, even. All before ending up in Middelburg and it was absolutely insane and there was so much more stuff. There was this whole gallery filled with ancient jewelry, like there was bronze age gold. There were Celtic torques. There was insane early medieval glass. And then in the gallery opposite that, there was these altars to this strange, esoteric ancient Roman goddess of the North Sea called Nehalena. And there was this whole wall filled with Celtic cremation urns. So I really fell close to my ancestors there. And then right beyond that, there was this room with this empty, presumably Roman sarcophagus, just unlabeled, in the middle of the room, next to mammoth bones and huge whale bones. And at the end of the gallery, there was this amazing room just lined with amazingly detailed tapestries of the Dutch absolutely BTFOing the Spanish during the Eighty Years War, complete with weapons used in the Eighty Years War right next to them. Just an insane museum, completely underrated, but I think it's an easy S-tier. What do you think, JP? Ah, S-tier. If I'm going to say S-tier, I'm going to sound incredibly biased. It was a great museum, but there was a little lack of plaques and explanations on the exterior. Yeah, okay. There was that. Some of the pieces. Yeah. Annoyingly, the only thing you had to go off of were these, like, paper fold-outs you got at every different gallery, which was a bit of a pain in the ass. But yeah. What would you rate it? Easy A-tier for me. Yeah, I think it's an A-tier. Maybe not S-tier. All things considered, A-tier seems fair for this one. But that's the thing, you're not coming to Middleburg for the museum, you're coming there for the vibes. Yeah, yeah. I completely agree. And it has great vibes, man. And I ate a classic Dutch staple for the first time there, herring, and it was absolutely fishily delicious, just like sushi. Better than sushi. Whoa. Next up, the Noord Brabant Museum. Okay, I'm butchering the pronunciation. What is it, JP? Noord Brabant Museum. Yeah, this is the regional museum of the beautiful province of Brabant. Amazing place. We toured the cathedral there. We went to the very top. You can do that just by booking a tour, like, five minutes in advance. Like, it's insane. Yeah, you should see the short I did about it. So it had a lot of sort of lame contemporary art, but it also had an amazing gallery of prehistoric and Roman stuff from the local area, which I love to see. It's the first place I saw a real Bronze Age sword, and I've been sort of obsessing about the Bronze Age for a bit, so that was insanely cool to see. It was small, but even after we visited the Sint Janskathedraal, we could tour the entire museum in two hours. It was very quiet for the amount of van Goghs that were there. Yeah, there was this huge collection of van Goghs there that barely anyone was looking at. Like, there was this entire gallery filled with some of the most beautiful van Goghs I've ever seen, and there were, like, five people there. It was insane. There's plenty of pieces there that I've definitely seen in my history books, but like you said, there was only a max of, like, five people there. It's a hidden gem, if you ask me. Yeah, so if you want a chill place to see van Goghs without all the tourists crowding up the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, definitely come to Den Bosch. Not to repeat myself too many times, but I feel like I would place this one in A-Tier as well. Absolutely, yeah. I think this is an easy A-Tier, too. A little too much contemporary art, but... Well, we had a nice game of, uh... What the f*** was that, actually, we played? What was that? Oh yeah, there was this, like, little air hockey table there that was a part of the contemporary art. That was actually pretty fun, so that was a major plus, actually. Next up is the Hogewoordmuseum. I kind of have mixed feelings about this one. I think it was pretty cool, though. Yeah, it was cool. It had good stuff, but in a little neighbourhood like that, it was kind of out from the main city centre. Yeah. It was a community centre, and there was a lot of kids around, mainly because there was like this play, and there was a bunch of stuff going on. They were wandering through the museum as well, which isn't bad. We always like to get younger people into history more, but this was insanely catered to kids. The room with the museum's most iconic piece, this intact Roman ship dredged up from the Rhine, was being used as this staging area for a play done by these little kids for their parents, which was, you know, adorable and all, but it is pretty important historic stuff, and there wasn't really any space for us to move around in. So that was a bit of a minus, but this was the only place where we've handled actual prehistoric and Roman artefacts, like, with our hands. Yes, and we talked to some very nice curators that didn't speak English very well. They were happy to oblige in answering any of the questions we had. Again, we got to touch real-life artefacts. Yeah, that was insane. That was insane. That was definitely worth the trip. All in all, good stuff, but for me, it was just a little too kid-oriented. They had some projectors, they had some voice-overs, had some replicas, little plastic replicas. Yeah, the replicas, that's really just not for me. I think I'm going to have to put this in C2. I was thinking maybe a B, but, hmm, I mean, they did have an intact Roman ship. That is pretty special. They did have an intact Roman ship, yes. Like, that was insane to see. Let's put it in B. I'll agree with B, too. Okay, B, B, B. All right. Okay, the next one. Kasteel Wijchen. This is an absolute hidden gem on the road to Nijmegen, in this little town Wijchen. It's this real, authentic castle with a museum filled to the brim with prehistoric and Roman and early medieval artifacts in it. It even hosted the local county council. Just the setting alone, for me, would put it in B-tier. Oh, spoilers. But, bell beakers, just the vibes, it was a beautiful castle. The staff was really nice, and they had this beautiful necklace, as well. Yeah, this beautiful early medieval Merovingian necklace that, though assembled in the Netherlands, had beads in it from Egypt and Syria. This was from right after the Roman Empire fell in the West, so those must have been insane journeys for those little beads. And it had tons of other cool stuff. If you're into early Germanic stuff, it had tons of very distinct raven pieces in it. It had the burial of a Merovingian warrior. And this whole section devoted to the Merovingians, which is an extremely rarely covered historical period outside of the Netherlands. So that was really cool to see. It's only a stop away towards Nijmegen. For us, it was on the way, but it's definitely worth it. Absolutely. So, how would you rate it? Just for the looks alone, I'd put it in B-tier. Yeah, very picturesque. This is a Disney-tier castle. Absolutely. Disney-tier castle. Artifacts, though, though they have some good pieces, this is not a museum you would spend the entire afternoon in. Yeah, this has local artifacts, really cool, really interesting, but not world-class highlights like some of the other museums we're about to cover. So I think we'd put this maybe in A-B? I'm conflicted between A and B. I do like a long museum tour, though. If I'm going to a museum, I want to spend the entire afternoon there, and I think this could not supply that. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. So, moving on to the Valkhof. This was supposed to be the centerpiece museum of Nijmegen, this ancient Roman city that was then used by the Holy Roman Emperors, starting with Charlemagne, as one of their main palace centers, but unfortunately, this museum was pretty much a bust. It was under construction. We didn't even get to properly visit it. The part that we got to visit was a contemporary art museum on some very important stuff regarding the colonial history of the Netherlands, but this was not where we came in. Yeah, the main building next to the main park in the city, where that Emperor's palace was, the Valkhof Park, was completely closed, like there's this giant fence around it. The only part of it that was open was this wing next to this little roundabout in the middle of the city. Only had two exhibits in it, as JP said, one about Surinamese slavery, and the other about recent Roman archaeological discoveries in the area, which was actually pretty cool to see, but it wasn't really that substantial, didn't really live up to the hype, and I think most disappointingly, it didn't have the Valkhof Museum's number one highlight, which was this Roman mask, this Roman cavalryman's mask, found in Nijmegen, that's, from the pictures, absolutely stunning, a must-see, but unfortunately, wasn't there. If you're a history fan, and you have heard the name Nijmegen, you definitely know what mask we're talking about, but we were lucky enough to see it, because it was actually relocated to a place called De Bastij. The De Bastij is this amazing, underrated museum just below the Valkhof, just below this 11th century church, right next to the Rhine, where you just know, tons of clashes between ancient Germanic warriors and Roman troops happened, literally evidenced by the artifacts found in the museum. It's literally built into the fortifications that were discovered right after World War II, that were at the base of this huge imperial palace we've been talking about. Just layer upon layer of fortification, it's just this labyrinth of brickwork, insane to be in, absolutely insane, the vibes there, off the charts. Interestingly, it had the local natural history collection, with all these taxidermied animals, and I think the standout piece from that was this giant ancient tree from Doggerland, so almost 10,000 years old, I think, that we actually got to touch, but unfortunately, I think it carried a little bit of a curse with it, because we had some troubles the days following that, but I think the absolute highlight of that museum though, was its insane Roman collection. It had that insane cavalry mask, which I just spent minutes awestruck by, just staring at it, full on, amazing. It had Roman swords, it had Roman helmets, it had all sorts of Roman stuff, incredible. If you're a Rome fan, and you get the chance to visit Nijmegen, you gotta, it's a must-see. So I'd put the Valkhof at maybe a C? A C? C for Valkhof does seem fair. It seems a bit unfair to put every Valkhof in it, because the modern part, obviously, that's a C for me. If the Valkhof Museum- As it will be in the future, as it's renovated. How would I put this? Basically, the Valkhof, it won't be open for like 10 years. Yeah. Once the Valkhof proper reopens, I'm sure it's going to be a sight to behold, but I think De Bastij really exceeded expectations. So I think it has a solid chance at being in B. Absolutely. Absolutely agree. B? If not higher, maybe A. The staff was incredibly friendly. And well, okay, let's be real. We kind of rushed the museum. We were meeting up with a friend of mine later. Yeah, we played pool. It was sick. I got my first taste of bitterballen. Delicious Dutch treat. You gotta have it. I got sort of sloshed. It was pretty cool. You can't be saying that, mate. It was a great place. Just for the mask, I'd give De Bastij an A. Everything else was a bonus. The absolute labyrinth of the fortifications on the Rhine, which the museum was sat in, like you mentioned earlier, that was just a treat to walk through. That was insane. It was amazing, honestly. I can't believe I'm saying A again, but I really do feel like this shouldn't belong in B, but it's just not reaching S tier, is it? Yeah, it's not S tier yet. But definitely a solid A from us. Next up is the Hunnebed Center. I'm gonna just take the lead here and say it's a massive letdown. I have so many opinions about this place. The main Hunnebed, main dolmen for you English speakers, was D27. It was just free to see outside. You didn't even have to enter the center. This was one of my favorite places going on school trips when I was young. The staff was friendly, sure, but the museum was small and I'm not a huge fan of replicas. And honestly, when we were in the park, I couldn't even distinguish what was real and what was a replica. They were supposed to have these burial hills there, but I didn't know if they were recreations. That was a bit unclear. They didn't have any plaques on them either, so it was just guesswork whether or not they were real. Major letdown for me. There were a few highlights. For example, they did have the contents of these Hunnebeden. And FYI, these Hunnebeden were built before Stonehenge, before the pyramids, in the 4th millennium BC. The one outside the museum, the biggest one there is, Hunnebed D27, it was absolutely gargantuan in person. The pictures just don't do it justice. Like, standing in front of it was an insane feeling. Just standing next to stones that had been deliberately placed there some 6,000 years ago, well, I mean, a little less than that, but almost 6,000 years ago, was insane. The museum did have some of the contents of those sorts of Hunnebeden, these amazing ancient pottery fragments from the funnel beaker culture, but there were a lot of dioramas. And the province this museum sits in, Drenthe? Not the easiest to reach, let's put it like that. The province that it was in, Drenthe, is not the best representation for the rest of the Netherlands if it comes to public transport. It was a bit difficult to reach. The train ride was long, full of delays, and they use a different system than the rest of the Netherlands, so it's difficult to... Like Limburg. To get to these Hunnebeden, it really shouldn't be this difficult. It should be a little bit more accessible, but then again, Drenthe is a little bit out of the way. Hunnebed Centrum is alright, you definitely need to see it to see D27. The museum itself is okay. A lot of dioramas, a lot of plastic. But also very kid-catered, again. Yeah, it's understandable, but it has the sort of vibe of a Midwest planetarium. So mainly look out for the Hunnebeden. Just for the amount of plastic stuff that they used, I would put it in C slash D tier. The Hunnebeden alone, I would... For the Stonehenge of the Netherlands, I would definitely put it in A or B tier, but this just wasn't it for me. Yeah. So if you want to see what was actually inside those Hunnebeden, definitely come here, but otherwise, a little too much plastic, a little too many dioramas. I'd say D tier. Yeah, I'd say D tier too. Next up, the Drenthe Museum. Yeah. Well, what can I say about this one? They had a lot of cool stuff. I'd probably give them that, but for me, it was just not the greatest. They had the oldest boat in the world there, but you couldn't even photograph it because, well, there was so much projector lighting going on in that room. Honestly, they had a lot of cool stuff, right? But it was just not it for me. There was too many projectors. They had voiceovers basically everywhere. Yeah, including next to human corpses. Oh, that was... The ethical considerations of which are a little iffy. Yeah, they had the mummified girl of Ida, but even in there, they had this voiceover playing in the background. It just kind of felt disrespectful, didn't it? Yeah, especially since the voiceover person was sort of impersonating the girl of Ida. Yeah, it was supposed to be the girl of Ida speaking her mind about her sacrifice and how the mummified girl even came to be, but it just felt out of touch, didn't it? Yeah, a little bit out of touch. But there were some incredible artifacts there. There was also the oldest boat in the world, which is honestly a privilege to see, but then it was completely overshadowed by the amount of projectors and beamers going on. You couldn't even photograph the thing because the light was just bouncing off the glass constantly. It was amazing to see. It's the oldest boat in the world, 10,000 plus years old, and there was other insane stuff there too, all preserved in the peat bogs of Drenthe, like Iron Age wheels, Iron Age shoes, these amazing Bronze Age swords dumped in the peat bogs as offerings, presumably. We don't know why. There's the actual authentic wood used to build this mysterious Bronze Age temple called the Temple of Barger Oosterveld, and it was just insane to see. You gotta see the stuff there. The layout, however, a little bit mixed. It's called the Labyrinth, there are signs in the museum calling itself the Labyrinth. It's true to its name. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely true to its name. The floor plan was an absolute mess. We went upstairs, downstairs, and then straight left, right, up, down again. I don't know where we were at that point. Through all of it, again, I might sound like a broken record, but this was, again, very catered to kids. It's definitely a must-see if you're studying the Hunebeden, though. It does also have the most choice specimens of Funnel Beaker pottery there are, also, of course, found in the Hunebeden, and it also contains the earliest metal to come from the Netherlands, these little tiny copper spirals used by the Funnel Beaker culture, which, reiterating, was in the Stone Age, so that's pretty insane. All in all, though, I think they had some cool stuff, right? I gotta give them that, but the presentation just wasn't there for me. No. I feel like they could have, at least, done the layout better. The projectors and the voiceovers, leave those out, and it would have bumped it up a whole tier for me, but then, grand reveal, the tier I would put this in. I mean, D tier for Drenthe, I'm sorry. D tier? But the level of the Oscar, I'd say C, I think, hmm, C or D. Just for the artifacts, B tier, but it was just put together so horribly, in my opinion. Okay, let's compromise. Let's put it in C. All right, I'm a reasonable man. I'll put this in C. I'll put my hate for Drenthe aside, and let's put it in C. All right. Next up is the Overloon War Museum. It didn't have any ancient stuff in it, but still very, very cool. Yes, absolutely. We got there a bit late. Travel there wasn't easy. What to expect from Limburg, to be honest. They had very cool stuff. It was, well, very touching, especially for me, since it talked about the occupation of my country, which is, of course, never a really easy topic. They had an amazing collection of vehicles and weaponry to display how they tackled the issues back in that time. For me, it was a great representation of not only the struggle, but also the resolve that not only the Americans, but just the Allies in general offered. Yeah, it was insane. There were lots of cool relics from the Dutch Resistance, like there was this baby pram filled with guns in the secret compartment at the bottom. There were these wooden bicycles, this remnant of a time when rubber was made so scarce by the Germans that people had to go around with wooden wheels. I can't speak on this personally, of course, but there's this story in my family where my grandmother's father went around asking houses in the neighborhood for potatoes to feed their very large family. And he actually went around on one of those bikes with wooden wheels. We sadly lost the bike, but it was a great story nevertheless. Absolutely. And there are also all these weird artifacts from the weird German-installed puppet government led by this fat, incestuous weirdo named Anton Mussert. He even had his own type of off-brand s**t. But the main feature of this museum was its enormous tank collection fitted together with the biggest assortment of war vehicles in general I've ever seen in my life. I'm a big war history fan and videos I watch on the topic from, for instance, Yarnhub, you might've seen them. The tanks that they use in those animations, those basically do not compare to the actual size of them. Yeah. When you're standing next to them, they're absolutely colossal. I mean, you cannot imagine the absolute terror that they could produce. Yeah, they're absolutely insane. But the horror of the war definitely still gets through to you. You see the damage caused by the shells that caused these tanks to blow up, which of course often end the lives of all of their crew. There's also this giant, recently excavated wreckage of an Allied plane, heart-wrenching to see. But overall, yeah, an incredible museum, even if it's in the middle of nowhere, Limburg. Like you said, though it's not easily accessible, this is still a great collection of vehicles and weaponry. Definitely go on an A-tier. Absolutely A-tier. I mean, I got to climb a tank. I'm incredibly grateful for this experience, though I'll probably never come back. It was way too far out for me. Okay, but next up is a definite change of pace, the Rijksmuseum van Oordheden, or... Well, Rijksmuseum van Oordheden, but let's just call it Rijksmuseum Leiden. Yeah, it's in the beautiful city of Leiden, which has all you could possibly see as a history buff in one day. It has dinosaurs, it has mammoths, it has a castle, and it has tons and tons of stuff from the ancient world all piled together in this amazing museum, this world-class museum. I would say definitely on the level of the classics like the Louvre and the British Museum, for sure. Well, yeah, it's just the building, the setting, the mummies, the sarcophagi, the temple and the church and the entrance just alone would absolutely blow me away in any other museum in the Netherlands, but it's really the Roman and the Dutch history exhibitions that I'm just a massive fan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you're a Dutch patriot, a proud Dutchman, you gotta go to this museum. It has all the most important relics from Dutch prehistory and history. It has this insane Mesolithic canoe right next to this little Mesolithic figurine called the Willemstad figurine, this little face from 7,300 years ago. You gotta see it. Right next to that are tons of Bronze Age weaponry, and then right next to that is the famous princely grave of Aas, this beautiful Celtic chariot burial, the remains of that, some more Celtic stuff, and who can forget the magnificent Bronze Age ceremonial swords of Omersjans and Jutvas. These are absolutely amazing, and they're part of a type of ceremonial sword that's also been found exactly twice in France and in England, so another L for Belgium. Merovingian stuff. There's this insane gilded late Roman helmet that was thrown in a peat bog in Brabant. You gotta see that. That is insane to see in person. And fittingly, we had a conversation about the fall of Rome with this random lady while we were looking at it, which is pretty cool. The Egyptian collection, world-class. There's a whole ancient Egyptian temple that you can see from the entrance that was reconstructed there painstakingly after it was salvaged from Nubia in order to save it from the rising waters of the Aswan High Dam in the 60s, similar to Abu Simbel. And to see that temple, you didn't even need to pay for the ticket. It was just in the lobby, just sitting there, flexing basically on the rest of it. Any other museum would pale in comparison. Nobody would do something like that. Absolutely amazing. 10 out of 10 experience just for that. Well, I've been there before, but last time I went there, well, I didn't have the knowledge, right? I was a little kid. I didn't have the knowledge I have now, and I definitely did not see that big temple at the lobby because I would have remembered. There were these insane Roman pieces. If you want to see the most of those cavalry helmets, go here. They have an insane wall just full of them and other Roman helmets. They have early Christian relics. They have tons of Greek stuff. There was this huge giant colossal head of this statue of Dionysus and tons and tons and tons of red figure and black figure pottery from Athens and across the Greek world. This collection, unmatched. We got there in time, 10 a.m. perhaps, but we still stayed till closing time. The guard had to basically force us out of the museum because we were stuck halfway through the Dutch prehistory gallery and we were just pushed out. We had to leave. We didn't even get to see the whole museum. We were like right at the end of the museum, but this guy ushered us out and it just so happens that the next time I visited it because I saw it twice just because I was so enamored with it, I wound up being at that exact same spot when another security guard came up and said, oh, it's closing time and he ushered me out yet again. So that was pretty funny. That alone should just display how much of an S-tier it is. This is an S-tier. This is a definite S-tier, if anything. This was by far my favorite visit on the trip. Well, visit, as if I'm not a tourist in my own country. But by far, this blows any museum out of the water. I would almost go as far as saying the Rijksmuseum doesn't have sh** on this museum. Yeah, name it. Okay, this is Steve in post-production. I realized that I didn't go over all the amazing must-see ancient Egyptian artifacts in the Rijksmuseum and there are a lot and I can't have that. I'm still the pharaoh nerd after all. First of all, there's the oldest surviving 3D sculptural depiction of an identified pharaoh and that's this little statue of the second dynasty king, Neneture. And there are other really, really, really early prototypical examples of Egyptian statuary from the third dynasty, too. A few steps away from that, there's the silver diadem of Nubkapere Inteh whose coffin is in the British Museum. But it's just amazing to see an actual ancient Egyptian crown because not a lot have survived. A little further down, there's this giant stone naus or shrine that would have once held the cult statue of a god in the sanctuary of a temple. And in this case, it was commissioned by Pharaoh Amasis, the only pharaoh to come to power by making a fart joke. And I'm not kidding, look in Herodotus. Right beyond that, there's this giant wall just crammed with different coffins. On the other side of that wall, there's some of the mummies that once would have been in them and some animal mummies, including this giant croc. There are also some very interesting funerary texts on the wall there. And then you walk through a door and you're met with their big statue gallery, which mostly comes from the Memphis necropolis of Saqqara. That includes these giant statues of Maya and his wife, Merit. Now, Maya was treasurer to Tutankhamen and was co-running the country since, you know, he was just a kid with a guy he's staring at across the walkway named Horemheb, who ran the army. And these are reliefs from Horemheb's tomb, which just so happened to neighbor Maya's at Saqqara. There's also a giant granite sarcophagus from Giza, of all places. There are the luxurious burial goods of the general Jehudi, who's best known for pulling a Trojan horse maneuver centuries before the Trojan horse. His tomb is lost, but these treasures are what remain of it. There's also this Byzantine helmet found in Egypt, and those are pretty rare, so that was pretty cool to see. And in the room where that was, there were these drawers you could pull open. And in one of those drawers was a notebook that belonged to Jean-Francois Champollion, the guy that translated hieroglyphs for the first time. So that was really cool to see, too. And there was another unmissable thing there, and that was the entire offering chapel of a high-ranking official from the Old Kingdom named Hetepirokhti, which was moved in its entirety from Saqqara all the way here. And it contains beautifully lively scenes of animals like hippopotami and crocodiles and the tomb owner and all the people working for him, like doing things like slaughtering his cows or in their off time fighting each other on boats or just boating around. It's really amazing. But there's a big hole in the back wall where the false door leading to the cult statue chamber would have been, so it was clearly robbed. In case you're wondering what this big, giant sarcophagus next to the Temple of Tafeh is, it's from a priest named Ahmos who lived during the 27th Dynasty, which basically just means when the Persians first started ruling Egypt. When a lot of these sort of big sarcophagi were made, you can see them across the museums of Europe, and there's another one at the base of this giant spiral stairway that connects the various levels of the museum. And there's so, so much more to this museum. I could go on for hours, but let's move on. Next up, Naturalis, also in Leiden. This is the Netherlands top natural history museum, and it shows. These Dutchmen love collecting fossils. Well, I can't speak on that too much because that was your solo mission right there. But I did go a couple times myself. Last time I was there, they had this guy, Freek Vonk. You might know him from the huge anaconda video. They had him basically as a poster boy, slapped onto absolutely everything. I mean, no hate to the guy, but it just kinda felt forced onto the beauty of the natural history museum. It was still a great collection of stuff they had there, of course. It's a must visit if you like dinosaurs and fossils and the deep, deep pre-human past because it has the most amazing T-Rex specimen I've ever seen in person alongside tons of other huge dinosaurs, including classics like a whole herd of Triceratops, the museum found in Wyoming, and Stegosaurus, and this enormous, enormous sauropod called Camarasaurus. It was just mind-boggling to see in person, fully mounted, its size almost impossible to comprehend. You have to go there in person. It also had more niche classics like Archaeopteryx and Tiktaalik, stuff you recognize from researching the deep past. Amazing stuff. There was also tons of Ice Age stuff. They had cave bears, mammoths. They had a whole room just with a giant map of the Netherlands in the Ice Age, just on the floor, surrounded by walls literally full of shelves of Ice Age fossils dredged up mostly from the North Sea. It also houses the first Homo erectus ever to be discovered, Java Man, alongside possibly one of the earliest pieces of art ever made, possibly made before humans existed, which was this little tiny shell from like half a million years ago, so like 200,000 years before Homo sapiens arrived on the scene that had some little zigzags etched into it, which was really interesting to ponder. Could Homo erectus make art? Where were their brains at? No one knows. Very interesting stuff. There was also this rock from Greenland, 3 billion years old. You could touch it. There were some of the oldest fossils I've ever seen, pre-Cambrian, so before life as we know it emerged. Insane stuff like that just throughout the whole museum. It's also in an insane setting. The museum building itself is an architectural marvel. It almost sort of looks like a honeycomb. It sort of reminds me of the grandiosity of the Natural History Museum in New York, but like times two almost. Really insane. A must visit. Putting this, I think, in A. What would you say, JP? Well, I obviously can't speak on the current state of the museum, but what I heard from it, Frick was less prominent now, which I like. It obviously has a bunch of great stuff. You said A. You know what? I'll stick to my streak. I'll go A as well. All right. Excellent. Another A to the pile. Next up with another Natural History Museum, this time much smaller, but still pretty cool. This little museum in Tilburg, near where I'm staying, called Naturmuseum Brabant in this big old house. It has this giant gallery of taxidermies and specimens stuffed in glass bottles of formaldehyde and giant dioramas of really small things like insects and snails, but like blown up to like 10 times their size, just in these giant glass racks that you can walk through. Really cool to see. You can see a stuffed polar bear next to a giant snail with its innards spilling out, a diorama, stuff like that. It's fun for the whole family. Very cool. Not too, too impressive. A little bit low key, but definitely nice to see. The main ancient highlight of it was this massive ancient mammoth skeleton fished out of the North Sea, laying unreconstructed on the top floor. That was pretty cool to see, especially since it was accompanied by this cave bear. And the absolute highlight has to be the enormous sperm whale skeleton they have. It just washed up on a beach somewhere like a decade or so ago. They mounted it. It's amazing to behold in real life. And last but not least, I have to mention this giant taxidermied scene of two lions in the middle of... Very rare type of taxidermy. Also, there weren't that many fossils, sadly, but it's OK. The taxidermies and all the specimens and formaldehyde really made up for it. Definitely can't be in A or S because we've just put too many greats in it already, but I think it deserves a solid C, let's say. Well, I wasn't there and I can't speak on it, but from what I've heard from you just now, that's absolutely a hidden gem. I might just go back there myself to see those lions in there. All right. Whereas I didn't have a firm opinion on the Natura Museum, I do absolutely have some opinions about the Alan Pearson Museum. Three words. Replicas, replicas. Replicas, mate. The mummies were nice, but basically everything felt fake. There was this whole floor with just statues and I was almost amazed by them, but only when I read the plaques. Replica. OK, next one. Replica. Let's see the next one then. That's beautiful. Replica. Absolute bulls**t. I hate this stuff. If you have a museum, display stuff that is real, please. Sometimes they had some really nice mummies and they had... Well, mummies, I say. There was a really nice mummy and the other one was in a section that was closed off because the roof was collapsing. Yeah, well those were animal mummies, but still. Mummies are mummies. I don't think you can take yourself seriously as a museum if you're closing off sections that are supposed to be your main draw. Yeah, true. Absolutely felt like I kind of needed to rush through the museum to get to the good stuff. Split down the middle. I don't know, man. I was just... I was not feeling it. True. I personally sort of liked it, though. It had, as we've said, an amazing mummy room with absolutely insane coffins, mainly from the Greco-Roman period of Egyptian history, with beautiful mythological scenes on them. Also, must-see Greek items. There was this whole story, as JP mentioned, that was just filled with plaster casts of the... with all the famous Greek and Roman sculptures everyone knows from their textbooks. They were relevant in the 19th century as artist models when a lot of this sort of stuff was made, but we live in the internet age now. You can see pictures of these things with the click of a button. They're not really that relevant anymore. But the real artifacts on display were pretty cool, although they were a little more sparse than I expected. Absolutely agree. Now, what they had was good. That's not what I'm saying, but it's just... Why would you put replicas on display when, like you said, the real thing, we can see it anytime. And let's be honest, we're in Europe. Two-hour flight to Rome, you can see the real thing. This kind of just felt forced. Let's fill another floor. Let's add some more things to get some more draw. We're in Amsterdam. We have to compete with the other ones. This is just not it for me. They even had these rocks on the ground that were supposedly from the Hunneberge. What is that supposed to mean? They were just random rocks with a maybe attached to it if it came to actual natural history. Like, come on. These could be random rocks from anywhere. You wouldn't know. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference. They could have just pulled them out from the sea or whatever. If they were definitely used in an ancient megalithic structure, that'd be pretty cool. But they weren't. These are just random rocks. So they had no place there. I don't know why they were there. I did like their Greco-Roman stuff, though. They did have this giant Roman sarcophagus and this very, very interesting collection of Byzantine relics from the Coptic period of Egypt's history, which is often sorely overlooked. The period when it was Christian, perfectly preserved clothes from that period, which again was like 1,500 years ago. So that's insane. And really, I think the main highlight of the museum is this little tucked away room containing the main highlights of their incredible Egyptian collection, which I was just personally blown away by. Yes, this was absolutely the stuff that I was referencing earlier. The stuff that you want to rush through the museum to get. I was going to originally say F tier, but that's not on the list. So it would have been D, but I'll put it in C. I'm leaning a little more towards B, but as a compromise, we'll put it in C. Although I did enjoy looking at that Egyptian collection. That was pretty nice. That was okay. I'll admit that was reasonably nice. All right. So there's one final museum on this list that we actually forgot to mention during our initial recording. So here in post-production, I have to decide where to put it. And that's the Catharine Convent in Utrecht. It's this wonderful museum of religious art with tons of old Catholic art and lots of somewhat newer Protestant art and everything in between. The two highlights, I think, have to be this Byzantine ivory of the Theotokos. May she be praised. And the oldest piece in the museum after that has to be from way, way further back. And it's this one Bronze Age stone hammer axe that was repurposed in the Middle Ages as a supposed relic of the Saint Saint Martin of Tours. And he supposedly used this in the fourth century to cut down pagan holy trees. And it has a silver haft with a nice Latin inscription on it, which is very, very interesting to me. I mean, it's not like I have a secret unreleased video all about this topic, right? Like, that'd be crazy. Anyways, the staff at the museum were really nice. We arrived 15 minutes before closing and they allowed us to tour the entire building. It's not very, very big, but that's made up for by the fact that it's set within a medieval convent as per the name, which is very cool. So I'd give it at least a solid B, maybe an A. And there's one final museum we forgot to even put on the tier list and that's the Moritzhaus in The Hague, also known to the Dutch as Den Haag. It's right next to the oldest continuously used parliament in the world along this picturesque lake. It's in this palace built by one Prince Maurice of Orange Nassau and it's absolutely amazing. It's like a smaller version of the Rijksmuseum because it's filled with all these old Dutch masters and much, much more and it's just a pleasure to walk through. It's main highlight is, of course, the Girl with the Pearl Earring, which is advertised absolutely everywhere in the lobby and it's at the very, very tippy top at the end of the galleries and it's right next to this other Vermeer, which is just as visually spectacular as all his works are and the other highlights have to include this famous scene of the Dutch doctors. I forget who it's by. The Rembrandts. I like this one picture of a sad old guy, one of many, which he made, which made me think a lot and some beautiful Hans Holbeins at the beginning of the gallery and there's so, so much more. It's definitely not as big as the Rijksmuseum or the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, but it certainly is amazing and a must-see. I'm not sure if I can put it in A because it's not on the same scale, but then again, it makes up for it with the fact that it's in an actual palace, so I'll put it in A, actually. I don't know what Joe will think, but I'm sure he'll be fine. If you like museums, you have to come to the Netherlands. It's absolutely amazing and not only does it live up to the hype, it exceeds it. This is the most well-put-together, functional country I've ever been to and I can't thank my host JP enough for letting me stay here for two weeks with him as basically my personal tour guide, helping me through pretty much every blunder I've gone through and as a non-Dutch-speaking tourist, I got into a lot of them. Thank you so much, JP. Well, as a Dutchman, I approve this message. Okay, excellent. The Netherlands is awesome. I would also like to thank my very generous patrons who made this trip possible. I mean, you really did. I probably would have had to end it weeks earlier than I did without you guys, so thank you so much and I'm sorry I haven't been very active on the Patreon recently or active in general. Frankly, I've been going through some issues lately, but I'm still committed to making videos for you guys and it's what I love doing and you guys allow me to do what I love, which is so special and I'm so grateful to all of you for that, so thank you so much and without further ado, let me read off their name. We have Drew Singal, Bajun, Harrison Timperley, Doc Bossman, Kevin Ryan, Ayanami Amamami, Bomb Tombadil, Danny Banani, Rose Klein, James Kirk, Booga420, Alyssa P, Mark Elliot Cullen, Jemmik Wierzbitski, of course, Jack Lester, Mithridates, Jake the Snake, Liz Bullard, Inbred Cat, Have a Cigar, Alex Clark, Jess Sullivan, Akune, Mark Krupnik, Miha Nidog, Michael, DaisiesforGhosts, Kaylin P, Julie Lowes, Athero, Bean Burrito, The Spoofer, Emily Kujo, Stevan, Gryphon Frost, Hippolyta, Magna de Broeker, Julia Erickson, JP Band, Splunder, Joseph Talley, Petra S, Generic Brand, Ryan Gregg, Skiku, Mason, Brandon Wood, Giovanna, Lazzarini, Patrick Darius Gramodka, Artem, Chris J, Max S, The History Enjoyer, Daniel Battery, Stapler, Machado de Cis, Mende Pruska, Alex Blachichu. Thank you all, and I should see you soon again with another installment of either the Forgotten Civilizations Iceberg or the Out of Place Artifacts Iceberg, everyone's favorite. Or if you actually want to get in touch, feel free to join my Discord, link in the description. Alrighty, see you guys soon!