There is more to Dutch museums than big art. So to tempt you to use your museum card in more places than you might have been doing, here are 11 very different museums that we think are worth a visit in 2025.

Small is beautiful

Museum Perron Oost in Amsterdam, reportedly the smallest museum in the world, has a very long history. The tiny building, a former overseer’s house, stands on a former railway platform that was once part of the hustle and bustle of the Oostelijk Havengebied.

There, for 150 years, cattle traders plied their trade, goods from the East entered the city and shipping companies ferried travelers to Indonesia, the United States and Suriname. The museum tells the stories of the people who passed through here and left their mark. Website

An oasis of greenery and art

It all started with a dilapidated 17th-century house in Drenthe bought some 50 years ago by couple Van Groeningen-Hazenberg who went on to house their (modern) art collection there. The art pavillion with its sloping greenery-covered roof that was added later.

Museum De Buitenplaats has a wonderful garden as well, planted in different styles, and a traditional walled garden with an apple orchard which is home to 21 age-old apple varieties. Website

A history of fakery

The Vledder museum of Fake Art presents its collection of forgeries as “art with a smile” although the people who found themselves taken to the cleaners by the likes of Han van Meegeren did not find much to smile about.

The museum explains how forgers like him and Geert Jan Jansen convinced the experts and how others continue to do so: the collection is still growing thanks to donations from bamboozled buyers and auction houses. To make sure they’re not dealing with the real thing after all, the museum, which must be the only one in existence where an alarm system is not needed, has a direct link with the police art and antiques department. Website

The anatomy of the history of science

It’s called the Vrolik (jolly) museum and although most people don’t find human bits in bottles a cause for merriment the unsqueamish will find much to enjoy and wonder at. The museum, named after anatomy professor Gerard Vrolik (1755-1859), is housed in the AMC location of Amsterdam universities teaching hospital.  The human remains on show here date from between 1750 and 1950.

Recently, the museum returned 15 skulls to the Moluccas in Indonesia where they had been taken from by a Dutch anthropologist in 1912. Website

Have a cuppa

The Theepotten museum in Aalten proves that anyone and anything can be made into a teapot, from a pointy bag of fish and chips to Jimi Hendrix and from a bottle of champagne to a tractor. There are thousands of teapots at the museum, most from Britain but some home-thrown, such as a round-bellied Holle Bolle Gijs. Website

Mice rule

They are not little mice with clogs on in a windmill but it is in old Amsterdam, in fact, Sam and Julia Mouse became so successful the world over they could afford to be grachtengordel mice and move into a mansion on Muntplein. This mouse universe was created by artist Karina Schaapman and it’s deliciously detailed and completely seductive, so bring your credit card. Or leave it at home. Website

And so do cats

Not to be outdone, the Kattenkabinet, the only museum in the world exclusively dedicated to cats, also boosts a posh address and, sorry mice, the Gouden Bocht on the Herengracht tops the Muntplein.

Founded in honour of cat John Pierpont Morgan in 1990, the museum hosts works by Pablo Picasso, Rembrandt, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Corneille, Sal Meijer, Théophile Steinlen, and Jože Ciuha, Real cats also stalk the place, no doubt to show their superiority to anything on show there. Website

It’s to die for

Tot zover (So far) at the Nieuwe Ooster cemetery in Amsterdam is a museum about the paraphernalia and rituals surrounding death, often making fun of some of the latest fads to affect the trade, such as oysters and white wine instead of cake and coffee and “services in bars, the woods or in between bales of hay” and the comeback of vinyl records for “vintage burials”.

The museum contains many fascinating curios, such as commemorative artworks created with human hair, diamonds forged from cremation ashes, and a paper urn fashioned from the correspondence of the deceased. Website

Learn chess with Max

The Max Euwe Centrum is where fans of the Dutch chess master can study his games in the dedicated library, including the one in which the unassuming maths teacher at a girls’ school wiped the floor with Alexander Aljechin in 1935 and made everyone want to play chess.

Oom Jan leert zijn neefje schaken ( Uncle Jan teaches his nephew to play chess), which Euwe wrote, is still in print. There’s lots about the history of chess as well. Website

Listen to the tales of the dead animals

Last but not least, the Dead Animal Tales at the Natuurhistorisch Museum in Rotterdam remains a firm favourite. Animals that came to a sticky end are lovingly curated complete with the cause of death, including the necrophiliac homosexual rapist duck, the crash gull and the McFlurry hedgehog. Website

Venture out of the bubble

Oscam, at Bijlmerplein in Amsterdam, stands for the Open Space Contemporary Art Museum, Ambitious and inclusive and worth venturing out from the city centre bubble, it has its finger on the pulse of social developments spilling over into art, fashion and design. Website