Story
The story of Mauritshuis
This elegant building beside the Hofvijver was a private home before it became one of the world's great small museums. In 1631 John Maurice of Nassau-Siegen bought the plot, and the house rose between 1636 and 1641 while he was governor of Dutch Brazil.
Jacob van Campen and Pieter Post designed it in the Dutch Classicist style, strictly symmetrical on two storeys. A fire in 1704 destroyed most of the interior, and the building was restored between 1708 and 1718. In 1822 it opened to the public with the Royal Cabinet of Paintings, now 854 objects, with works by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Jan Steen and Frans Hals.
During the Nazi occupation, Girl with a Pearl Earring was kept in a bombproof bunker below the museum, then in the St Pietersberg caves near Maastricht until liberation in May 1945.
This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗
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