Exploring the Boerhaave Museum: A Dive into Dutch Scientific History

During our recent trip to Leiden we decided to visit the Boerhaave museum again. This is a very famous Dutch history of science museum covering 5 centuries of scientific discoveries in The Netherlands. You can view famous scientific equipment like early telescopes and microscopes used by for example Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Quite a lot of the scientific development in the 16-17th centuries were related to medicine and anatomy and navigation. Walking through the museum you get a good view of the progress over time in the medical sciences. The more recent section of the museum covers communication and electronics and contributions from famous Dutch companies active in those fields like Philips and ASML. There are quite some interactive exhibits for visitors to experiment and get some hands on understanding of the concepts on display. We have been a couple of times to Boerhaave and roughly 20 years ago it was an old fashioned museum with a collection of instruments in glass cases but then they modernised the way they put their collection on display, making a visit more palatable for the general public. The main collection is still too large to absorb in one visit so I find it better to sample parts and combine it with the temporary exhibition. Then return and sample other parts of the main collection with a new temporary exhibition. Of course this only works if you live not too far away. We spent a couple of hours before lunch going through the museum and visiting the 2 temporary exhibitions: ‘ about ‘Truth. The Art of Doubt.’ and ‘Playing with Mathematics’. Playing with Mathematics can be taken literally in this case as it existed of various interactive exhibits illustrating the mathematics of waves, probability and optics for example. It was clearly aimed at younger children but still amusing for adults to peruse. If you are interested in the history of science then museum Boerhaave is a must visit. After our visit it was time for lunch and we ended up in Vlot Grand Café. This bistro is located on a boat/raft but it also has a small terrace in front where we sat. The have many different sandwiches on offer and some burgers as well. I decided to go for the ‘kroket’, a Dutch specialty. They were ok but not exceptional. Food was good for a simple lunch, location on the terrace in front is next to the roadside but with almost no car traffic this is still ok. If you want to experience a bit more unique atmosphere you will have to sit on the boat.