She’s the most famous girl in the world — mysterious, luminous, and doe-eyed. Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring draws crowds from across the globe, and her home couldn’t be more fitting.
Housed in a 17th century canal-side mansion in The Hague, the Mauritshuis is a jewel box of Dutch Golden Age art. It’s small in size, but packed with giants.
You’ll find Vermeer, Rembrandt, Rubens, Steen, and Fabritius all under one gilded roof. No museum fatigue required. It’s a perfect bite size museum experience.
This guide takes you through everything you need to know for visiting the Mauritshuis, from must-see paintings to practical tips.
>>> Click here to book a guided tour of The Hague & Mauritshius ticket
Overview & Tips
The museum is small and gives off palace vibes, similar to the Frick Collection in NYC.
There are Venetian glass chandeliers, silk wall coverings, frescoed ceilings, and luxe trappings. Oh la la!
William V assembled the core of the collection, which consists of over 800 paintings. The collection was stolen as spoils of war in 1795. But it was returned to The Hague in 1815.
Completed in 1644, the Mauritshius was the personal residence of Johan Maurits. He’s a bit of an embarrassment. And the museum has historically downplayed Maurits’ ties to slavery, focusing instead on his art patronage.
In 2017, however, a bust of Johan Maurits was quietly removed from the museum, sparking controversy over transparency.
The museum initially said it was due to renovation, but later acknowledged the discomfort surrounding his colonial past. The removal sparked a public debate in the Netherlands about how to address slavery and colonialism in cultural institutions.
And, just so you know, the museum’s name is pronounced “MAU-ritz.”
Here’s how it’s organized:
🔸 The Historic House
This is the main exhibition space, where you’ll find the core collection: Vermeer, Rembrandt, Steen, Fabritius, etc.
The rooms are arranged to reflect the building’s 17th century grandeur, with paintings hung in intimate, salon style galleries.
The layout is loosely thematic. But it also preserves a sense of historic domestic flow, with richly decorated rooms.
Highlights are grouped by genre, artist, or subject matter:
- Vermeer Room – includes Girl with a Pearl Earring and View of Delft
- Rembrandt Room – houses The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp and several other of the artist’s works.
- Still Life and Genre Painting – works by Jan Steen, Pieter Claesz, and others.
- Landscapes and Animals – including Paulus Potter’s The Bull.
- Flemish Masters – such as Rubens and van Dyck.
🔸 The Modern Wing
The museum expanded into the adjacent Art Deco building across the street.
The two spaces are linked by an underground tunnel beneath the street.
This modern wing includes:
- The entrance and ticketing area
- Cafe, museum shop, and auditorium
- Special exhibition space for temporary shows
In high season, you should pre-book a skip the line ticket.
Must See Paintings At The Mauritshius
1. Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring
This painting is the museum’s crown jewel. Often dubbed the “Mona Lisa of the North,” it’s famous for its quiet intimacy, luminous light, and that ever so enigmatic glance.
Vermeer’s girl wears a fashionable gold jacket and a blue, a blue and gold head scarf, and an ultra large pearl earring.
Her extraordinary eyes turn directly to meet your gaze. She’s open and yet still mysterious looking.
She’s set against a black backdrop. But that’s changed with the passage of time. It was originally a green velvet curtain.
Scholars say it’s not a real pearl. That would have been way too expensive for a fairly impoverished Vermeer. It was more likely Venetian glass.
Like the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, there’s a railing around the painting. And only 30 people are allowed in the room at one time.
There’s absolutely no evidence to confirm this, but some suspect that the girl is a portrait of Vermeer’s daughter. This would be unusual for him.
He painted “tronies,” a popular 17th century genre meant to depict a type or character rather than a real individual.
The Girl with the Pearl wasn’t famous in Vermeer’s lifetime. It took international shows, a best selling Tracy Chevalier novel, and a movie starring Scarlett Johansson to put her on the map.
2. Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp
The Mauritshius has 11 Rembrandt paintings, a nice haul.
This one is a masterpiece of group portraiture and psychological intensity. I myself prefer it to the more famous Night Watch at the Rijksmuseum.
It puts on full display Rembrandt’s early genius in capturing human expression and the drama of light and shadow. It looks almost like a scene from a play, merging portraiture and narrative.
The Anatomy Lesson may just be a group of men sitting and staring. But they’re not stiff and formulaic.
Rather, it feels like they’re thinking. The figures are interacting with each other and the viewer in a dynamic triangular composition. Each has a different reaction on his face, and it’s all rendered with Rembrandt’s trademark chiaroscuro.
Rembrandt was only 26 when he painted this. It launched his career in Amsterdam, showing he could handle complex commissions.
3. Vermeer, View of Delft
View of Delft is one of the few cityscapes Vermeer ever painted—a quiet, radiant tribute to his hometown, remarkable for its precision and the delicate play of light.
Many art historians consider it among the greatest cityscapes ever created. Marcel Proust even called it “the most beautiful painting in the world.”
It has the same calm glow and compositional control as Vermeer’s interiors. And yet, he left this direction behind.
He deliberately turned away from cityscapes. Not because he lacked the skill.
But because they didn’t offer what he most wanted to explore: emotional intimacy and psychological depth, captured in a single room with one woman, one light source, and one suspended moment.
4. Carel Fabritius, The Goldfinch
This small, astonishingly realistic painting was made famous by Donna Taart’s fiction novel The Goldfinch.
Fabritius was a pupil of Rembrandt and a teacher of Vermeer, making him a critical link in Dutch art history. He died young in the 1654. And the Delft gunpowder explosion, that same year, destroyed much of his work.
The Goldfinch is one of only about a dozen known surviving paintings. That alone gives it rarity and historic value.
It looks deceptively simple, a chained bird on a perch. But it’s painted with such realism, restraint, and spatial illusion that it’s often described as a trompe l’oeil (trick of the eye).
The soft light, cast shadow, and minimal background create an almost 3D effect, especially in person. It’s meditative. Quiet. Sparse.
You can feel its little weight on that perch. Some even interpret it as a memento mori, given the bird’s chain and the artist’s sudden death.
Fabritius moved beyond Rembrandt’s dark drama and toward the clean light and spatial clarity that would later define Vermeer. If you want to understand the evolution of Dutch painting, The Goldfinch is a quiet hinge point.
5. Paulus Potter, The Bull
At nearly life size, this painting of a bull in a Dutch landscape is surprisingly majestic.
It’s one of the most beloved Dutch paintings, a symbol of their national identity. Still, you might wander why, thinking it’s just a painting of a cow.
At the time, the painting was revolutionary for elevating a humble farm animal to grand historical scale. Potter made this bull a heroic subject. That alone was radical in 1647.
The painting blends portraiture, landscape, animal study, and social commentary into one sweeping canvas. Think of it as the Dutch Golden Age version of a multi-genre epic.
It was stolen by the Nazis, and that elevated its status further.
Still, it might just be “famous for being famous.” To me, it’s not particularly emotionally moving and the composition is a bit awkward.
6. Jan Brueghel the Elder & Peter Paul Rubens, The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man
This is a collaborative painting featuring Rubens’ figures and Brueghel’s lush and detailed animal kingdom.
The scene shows Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, just before the Fall. Eve is reaching for the forbidden fruit, and the serpent (often depicted with a woman’s face in Flemish art) coils around a tree.
The couple is surrounded by a paradise teeming with animals: lions, elephants, horses, birds, monkeys, and more. The setting is dense with foliage, flowers, and vivid natural detail.
The juxtaposition of paradise with the looming sin underscores the tension of the moment. The painting has both a religious narrative and Baroque interest in dramatic storytelling.
Why did they paint it together? This actually wasn’t that uncommon at the time where they lived.
And they both painted their specialty. It’s an exceptional blend of two very different sensibilities: Brueghel’s controlled precision and Rubens’ emotional energy.
7. Rembrandt, Self-Portrait
This is a late self-portrait, but not Rembrandt’s final one. It dates to 1669, the year of his death, and is considered his final self-portrait on panel (wood).
It’s a deeply introspective, honest, and quietly powerful work. The painting shows Rembrandt’s weathered face and demonstrates his unmatched ability to convey depth, personality, and vulnerability through paint.
At the time, the artist was in financial decline, had outlived most of his loved ones, and was no longer fashionable. But artistically, he was at the zenith of his powers.
In the portrait, he wears a simple brown artist’s smock and white cap, standing against a plain background. His face is aged, sagging, and fleshy, with tired eyes.
Still, he meets the viewer’s gaze directly. There’s neither vanity nor flattery. You can see his bold brushwork, soft modeling of the face, and subtle textures, which all reflect Rembrandt’s mature style.
8. Gerrit Dou, The Young Mother
This painting was one of the most prized paintings in the collection of Prince William II of Orange and later his son William III, who brought it to Hampton Court Palace in England. That royal connection gave it prestige early on.
It’s a brilliant example of Dou’s fijnschilder (fine painting) technique, which involved ultra-precise brushwork and meticulous detail. The textures of fabric, light, and still life elements are exquisitely rendered.
It combines domestic genre painting with subtle moralizing and emblematic references, a hallmark of Dutch painting.
It was praised in Dou’s lifetime and widely reproduced in prints, admired for its craftsmanship and idealized depiction of Dutch domestic life.
9. Jan Steen, As the Old Pipe, so Sing the Young
Jan Steen’s As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young is, like all Steens, a masterclass in storytelling through paint. It’s a bustling, slightly chaotic domestic scene packed with mischief and moral undertones.
At first glance, it’s a lively portrayal of merrymaking. A boy casually smokes a pipe, while a woman reclines with an unbuttoned collar, her wineglass eagerly refilled.
But beneath the humor and warmth lies a cautionary tale. Steen, known for his wry moralizing, uses this scene to critique indulgence and parental example.
Every gesture, from the smirk of the boy to the satisfied slouch of the adults, underscores the Dutch proverb from which the painting takes its title: children learn by imitation.
10. Rogier van der Weyden, The Lamentation of Christ
The oldest painting at the Mauritshuis is Rogier van der Weyden’s The Lamentation of Christ.
The artist was one of the most influential painters of the 15th century and a key figure in the Flemish Primitive movement.
It’s a beautiful oil painting, filled with detail. The altarpiece depicts Mary kneeling by her dead son in mourning.
His disciples look down in dismay. You can almost feel the tears flowing.
The kneeling man at the right has nothing to do with the painting itself. It’s just that he had the dollars to commission it.
11. Bonus: Prince William V Gallery
The Prince William V Gallery isn’t located inside the Mauritshuis building itself. But it’s just a short walk away, right around the corner on the same square.
The gallery’s part of the Mauritshuis collection and admission is included with your Mauritshuis ticket.
The gallery recreates the feel of an 18th century collector’s room. It’s based on the original display style of Prince William V, who assembled a grand collection of Dutch and Flemish paintings.
The space is smaller, densely hung, and full of dramatic lighting and atmosphere. You’ll see some pieces by Steen, Rubens, Gerrit Dou, and Jacob van Ruisdael.
Practical Tips For Visiting The Mauritshius
Address: Plein 29, 2511 CS Den Haag (The Hague), Netherlands
Tickets:
- Adults: €20
- Students (under 27): €13
- Youth under 19 & Museum Card holders: Free (reservation required)
You can download a free museum app to browse through the collection and get information. Unless you just want to look, you’ll want this because the information wall panels are kept short.
Time slots close 10 minutes after your scheduled visit time. But you can stay as long as you want.
>>> Click here to book a Mauritshius ticket
Hours:
- Monday: 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm
- Tuesday–Sunday: 10:00 am to 6:00 pm
- Prince William V Gallery (next door): Tuesday through Sunday, 12:00 pm to 5:00 pm. Closed Mondays
Crowd Limits:
To avoid the museum being overcrowded due to an onslaught of tourists, the museum limits entry to 1,000 at a time. In the Vermeer Room, only 30 people are allowed to see The Girl at once.
Is The Maruitshius Worth Visiting?
I think so, just for the concentration of Vermeers and Rembrandts. It’s a gorgeous museum space, well-organized, and won’t even take a chunk of time out of your day. It’s more rewarding than the Dutch section of the Louvre, and takes half the time.
On the other hand, the museum is narrow in scope. It’s Dutch Golden Age or bust.
There is no other style of art. If you don’t like Dutch and Flemish art, it’s probably skippable.
If hope you’ve enjoyed my guide to the Mauritshius. You may find these other Netherlands guides useful:
- Tips for visiting the Netherlands
- Best places to visit in the Netherlands
- One day in Amsterdam itinerary
- 2 days in Amsterdam itinerary
- One day in Rotterdam itinerary
- Best things to do in Delft
- Guide to the Anne Frank House
- Guide to the Rijksmuseum
- Guide to Keukenhof Gardens
- Guide to Rembrandt House
- Guide to the Van Gogh Museum
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