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The home of the country's most prestigious university,
LEIDEN
has an academic air. The students give the town a certain energy, and Leiden's museums are varied and comprehensive enough to merit a visit in themselves, though the town's real charm lies in the peace and prettiness of its gabled streets and canals.
Leiden's most appealing quarter is that bordered by Witte Singel and Breestraat, focusing on Rapenburg, a peaceful area of narrow pedestrian streets and canals that is home to the city's best-known attraction, the
Rijksmuseum Van Oudheden
, Rapenburg 28 (Tues-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat & Sun noon-5pm; e¬3.20), the country's principal archeological museum. You can see one of its major exhibits for free in the front courtyard - the first-century AD Temple of Teffeh, a gift from the Egyptian government. Inside the museum are more Egyptian artefacts, along with Classical Greek and Roman sculpture and exhibits chronicling the archeology of the country through prehistoric, Roman and medieval times. Further along Rapenburg, at no. 73, the
Hortus Botanicus
(March-Oct daily 10am-6pm; Nov-April Mon-Fri & Sun 10am-4pm; e¬3.60;
www.hortus.leidenuniv.nl
) are among the oldest botanical gardens in Europe, planted in 1587. Across Rapenburg, a network of narrow streets converges on the
Pieterskerk
(daily 1.30-4pm; free), deconsecrated these days but still bearing the tomb of John Robinson, leader of the Pilgrim Fathers, who lived in a house on the site of what is now the Jan Pesijn Hofje, at Kloksteeg 21.
East of here,
Breestraat
marks the edge of Leiden's commercial centre, behind which the two rivers converge at the busiest point in town, the site of a vigorous Wednesday and Saturday
market
which sprawls right over the sequence of bridges into the blandly pedestrian Haarlemmerstraat, the town's major shopping street. Close by, the
Burcht
(daily 10/11am-11pm; free) is a rather ordinary, graffiti-daubed shell of a fort perched on a mound, whose battlements you can clamber up for a view of Leiden's roofs and towers. The nearby
Hooglandsekerk
(mid-May to mid-Sept Mon 1-3.30pm, Tues-Sat 11am-3.30/4pm; free) is a light, lofty church with a central pillar that features an epitaph to Pieter van der Werff, the burgomaster at the time of a 1574 siege by the Spanish, who became a hero by offering his own body as food. His invitation was rejected, but - the story goes - it instilled new determination in the flagging citizens. Across Oude Rijn from here, the
Museum Boerhaave
, Lange Agnietenstraat 10 (Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm; e¬3.40) is a brief but absorbing guide to medical developments over the last three centuries, with some gruesome surgical implements, pickled brains and the like. Five minutes' walk away, Leiden's municipal museum, in the old Cloth Hall, or
Lakenhal
, Oude Singel 28-32 (Tues-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat & Sun noon-5pm; e¬3.60) has mixed rooms of furniture, tiles, glass and ceramics and a collection of paintings centred on Lucas van Leyden's
Last Judgement
triptych, plus canvases by Jacob van Swanenburgh, the first teacher of the young Rembrandt, and by Rembrandt himself. Around the corner on Molenwerf, the
Molenmuseum de Valk
, 2e Binnenvestgracht 1 (Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; e¬2.30), is located in a restored grain mill, one of twenty that used to surround Leiden, with living quarters furnished in simple, period style and a slide show recounting the history of windmills. Between here and the station at Steenstraat 1, the
National Museum of Ethnology
(Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde; Tues-Sun 10am-5pm; e¬6), has extensive sections on Indonesia and the Dutch colonies. Near the station on Darwinweg, Leiden's newest museum,
Naturalis
, the Museum of Natural History (Tues-Sun noon-6pm; during school holidays daily 10am-6pm; e¬7.30;
www.naturalis.nl
), boasts two dinosaurs, a prehistoric horse and a whole host of exhibits from the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms.
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