Leiden

Leiden has a habit of being first: first university in the Netherlands, first tulips in Europe, first Pilgrims in America, first microscope. It’s a city where consequential things keep happening.

The Rapenburg — often called the most beautiful canal in the Netherlands

The City in 60 Seconds

Leiden sits at the confluence of two branches of the Rhine — the Oude Rijn and the Nieuwe Rijn — which gives the city a distinctive texture: canals everywhere, bridges everywhere, and a sense that the city is built around water rather than next to it.

The university (1575) dominates the character of the place. Around 24,000 students occupy a city of 120,000 — a higher ratio than almost anywhere in the Netherlands. The result is an unusually lively, internationally-minded city with good cafés, independent bookshops, and a tolerance for eccentricity. Einstein lectured here in the 1920s. Rembrandt was born here in 1606 and left at 22, which he never apologised for.

The Rapenburg canal — the spine of the city — is widely considered the most beautiful single street in the Netherlands. That’s a big claim, but it’s hard to argue once you’ve walked it.

Route

1. Burcht van Leiden — Medieval Fortress

Time here: 20 minutes

The Burcht, a 12th-century shell keep on an artificial mound

The Burcht is a 12th-century circular fortress on a mound (motte) at the exact point where the Oude Rijn and Nieuwe Rijn meet. It’s small — the inner courtyard is about 20 metres across — but the view from the top of the shell keep is the best orientation point in Leiden: you can see the two rivers diverging below you, the city’s canal network spreading outward in both directions, and the spire of the Pieterskerk to the south.

Entry is free, access is unrestricted, and it’s almost always quiet. The mound dates to the early Middle Ages and may have been a burial mound before it became a fortification.

Don’t miss: The carved coats of arms embedded in the inner wall — they represent the noble families who were lords of Leiden before the city bought its own freedom in the 14th century.

Walk to stop 2: Descend from the Burcht and walk south along the Breestraat — 4 minutes.

2. Pieterskerk & the Pilgrim Trail — Gothic Church

Time here: 25 minutes

The Pieterskerk (1378–1425) is the largest Gothic church in Leiden and has been repeatedly damaged, repurposed, and rebuilt over the centuries — used as a granary, a fire station (the tower), and briefly a prison during the Napoleonic period. It’s still a functioning community space rather than a tourist attraction, which gives it a different atmosphere from more heavily curated churches.

The Pilgrim Fathers connection is real and specific. The Separatist congregation of John Robinson arrived in Leiden in 1609 and lived in houses clustered around the Pieterskerk for eleven years. Robinson preached in a house directly adjacent to the church — the site is marked. In 1620, the congregation split: some sailed from Delfshaven (Rotterdam) to Plymouth Rock on the Speedwell and Mayflower. The rest stayed in Leiden. A small exhibition in the church covers the history.

Don’t miss: The alley Kloksteeg beside the church — this is where John Robinson’s house stood, and where the Pilgrim Fathers congregation assembled before the Mayflower voyage.

Also nearby: Rembrandt’s birthplace is a 3-minute walk east on Weddesteeg. The house no longer exists — it was demolished — but a plaque marks the site at Weddesteeg 29a.

Walk to stop 3: From the Pieterskerk, walk west one block to the Rapenburg canal — 2 minutes.

3. Rapenburg & Academiegebouw — The University Canal

Time here: 25 minutes

The Rapenburg is a 700-metre canal lined on both sides by the classical facades of Leiden University and the private mansions of Leiden’s 17th-century merchant class. Walk the entire length, from the Pieterskerk end south to the Hortus Botanicus entrance.

The Academiegebouw (main university building, 1516) stands at Rapenburg 73. It’s the headquarters of the oldest university in the Netherlands and one of the oldest in Northern Europe. Walk inside during visiting hours — the ceremonial hall (Senaatszaal) is open to visitors on request and contains a collection of honorary doctorate portraits stretching back to the 17th century.

At Rapenburg 28, the pavement widens and the view down the canal is at its best. This is where most photographers stop. The reflection of the gabled facades in the still water on a calm morning is one of the canonical images of Dutch urban landscape.

Don’t miss: The Goolden Street inscription above several Rapenburg doorways — Latin mottos chosen by the original owners of the houses.

Walk to stop 4: Continue south along the Rapenburg to the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden — 3 minutes.

4. Rijksmuseum van Oudheden — National Museum of Antiquities

Time here: 90 minutes

The Dutch national museum of antiquities is on the Rapenburg and contains one of the finest collections of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman art in northern Europe. Most people go to Leiden and miss it entirely. This is a mistake.

The centrepiece is the Temple of Taffeh — a complete Egyptian temple from the 1st century AD, built at the temple complex of Isis at Taffeh in Nubia (now under Lake Nasser in Sudan). When Egypt built the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s, the rising waters threatened dozens of ancient sites. UNESCO coordinated an international rescue effort; Egypt subsequently gave four temples to the nations that contributed most to the salvage. The Netherlands received Taffeh. The temple — approximately 7 × 4 metres and 5 metres tall — was dismantled stone by stone, shipped to Leiden, and rebuilt inside the museum’s entrance hall. You walk into it.

The Greek and Roman collections upstairs are equally excellent but less dramatic. The Egyptian collection in the vaulted basement is among the best in Europe.

Don’t miss: The Leyden Bottle (Leidse fles) collection — one of the first capacitors ever made, invented in Leiden in 1745, which demonstrated that electric charge could be stored and discharged. The invention preceded the discovery of electricity as a general phenomenon.

Walk to stop 5: Walk south along the Rapenburg to Rapenburg 73 — 2 minutes.

5. Hortus Botanicus Leiden — Botanical Garden

Time here: 45 minutes

The Hortus Botanicus Leiden (1590) is one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world. It was founded at the request of Carolus Clusius, the Flemish botanist who had spent decades studying plants in Spain, Portugal, and the Ottoman Empire. Clusius had obtained tulip bulbs from the Ottoman court — the first tulips in the Netherlands — and planted them here in 1594. Within two years they had been stolen from the garden beds. Within forty years, tulip speculation had driven a financial bubble that collapsed the Dutch economy.

The garden’s current layout still includes a reconstruction of Clusius’s original 1594 beds, with the same species he planted. The glasshouses contain a substantial tropical collection, including a 300-year-old cycad (the oldest pot plant in the world, brought from South Africa in 1709) and a Victoria water lily pad large enough to sit on.

Don’t miss: The Clusius garden reconstruction near the main entrance — the beds are labelled with their 16th-century names and uses (culinary, medicinal, ornamental, dyeing).

Practical tip: The garden is at its best in May when the historic tulip varieties are in bloom.

Where to Eat & Drink

• Coffee: Café de Witte Singel (Witte Singel 90) — overlooking the canal, excellent coffee, local graduate student crowd.
• Lunch: Annie’s (Hoogstraat 1a) — wharf-level café directly at the confluence of the two Rhines, with a terrace on the water. The view of the Burcht mound from the terrace is exceptional.
• End-of-tour drink: Koetshuis de Burcht (Burgsteeg 14) — a café in the former carriage house of a 17th-century mansion adjacent to the Burcht, with a small courtyard.

Practical Info

History & Fun Facts

• The Siege of Leiden (1574). The Spanish army besieged Leiden for 131 days in 1573–74. By October 1574, the city was starving — residents were eating rats, shoe leather, and grass. William of Orange ordered the dykes cut and the polders flooded, allowing a fleet of flat-bottomed Sea Beggar ships to sail across the submerged farmland and deliver food. The Spanish, unwilling to drown, retreated. The day of relief — 3 October — is still celebrated in Leiden as Leidens Ontzet, with a distribution of herring and white bread on the Pieterskerk square.
• The tulip bubble. The tulip was introduced to Western Europe through this garden by Carolus Clusius in 1594. By 1636–37, single tulip bulbs of rare varieties were trading at prices equivalent to a comfortable Amsterdam canal house. The most expensive single transaction recorded was 6,700 guilders for one Semper Augustus bulb — enough to buy a modest ship. The market collapsed in February 1637 when buyers stopped turning up to auctions. It’s considered the first recorded speculative financial bubble.
• Rembrandt was born four streets from this route. Rembrandt van Rijn was born on Weddesteeg in Leiden on 15 July 1606, the eighth of nine children of a miller. He attended the Latin School (now the Stedelijk Gymnasium, still operating) and briefly enrolled at Leiden University at age 14 — leaving almost immediately to apprentice as a painter. He left Leiden for Amsterdam at 22 and never seriously returned.
• Einstein in Leiden. Albert Einstein held a special visiting professorship at Leiden University from 1920 to 1933 and gave lectures in the Academiegebouw. He stayed with physicist Paul Ehrenfest, whose house at Witte Rozenstraat 57 still bears a plaque. Einstein reportedly loved Leiden and called Ehrenfest his closest friend.
• The Pilgrim Fathers spent 11 years here. The congregation arrived in 1609, settled around the Pieterskerk, and thrived — to the point that some members worried their children were becoming “too Dutch” and losing their English identity. This, combined with economic hardship and the expiry of the Dutch-Spanish truce in 1621, motivated the Mayflower departure. Leiden citizens petitioned for a Pilgrim memorial; a commemorative stone in the Pieterskerk floor marks Robinson’s approximate burial place.
• Leyden jar. In 1745, Pieter van Musschenbroek and his student accidentally invented the first capacitor while trying to “bottle” static electricity. The device — a glass jar lined with metal foil — could store electrical charge and discharge it suddenly. It was called the Leyden jar (after the city’s anglicised name) and was the first device to demonstrate that electricity could be stored and used on demand.