Rembrandt's Amsterdam: House, Night Watch and Grave

On 5 January 1639 Rembrandt bought a house on the Breestraat for 13,000 guilders. He lived here until 1658, painting in his studio and running an art dealership from the same building. The mortgage that paid for it became the root of his later money troubles. Today it is the Rembrandt House Museum, rebuilt from the inventory drawn up when he went bankrupt in 1656, so you can walk through his living room, art room and studio. The museum opened on 10 June 1911.

訪問のヒント: Rembrandt House Museum, Jodenbreestraat; check opening hours and tickets on the museum's own website.

Between 1640 and 1642 Rembrandt painted The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, better known as The Night Watch, and it became his most famous work. It was commissioned for the new hall of the Kloveniersdoelen, the musketeer branch of the civic militia. After the city-owned paintings joined the national collection, it ended up in the Rijksmuseum, where it hangs in the Night Watch Room at the end of the Hall of Fame.

訪問のヒント: The Night Watch Room is at the end of the Hall of Fame in the Rijksmuseum; check opening hours and tickets on the museum's website.

Rembrandt was a frequent visitor to Amsterdam's oldest church, and all his children were christened here. His wife Saskia van Uylenburgh died in 1642, probably from tuberculosis, and was buried in the Oude Kerk. Each year on 9 March at 8:39 am the early morning sun briefly lights her tomb. Inside, a small Rembrandt exhibition in the Holy Sepulchre serves as a shrine to her.

場所の精度: The church is certain; the sources do not give the exact spot of Saskia's tomb, so the pin marks the Oude Kerk itself.

訪問のヒント: The Oude Kerk on Oudekerksplein is open to visitors; check opening hours first.

By February 1658 the Breestraat house had been sold at a foreclosure auction, and Rembrandt's family moved to more modest lodgings on the Rozengracht in the Jordaan. He spent his last eleven years here, from 1658 to 1669, at Rozengracht 184/190. The painter Meindert Hobbema lived opposite. The street was once a canal and is now a busy tram road.

場所の精度: Sources give the address as Rozengracht 184/190; the pin marks a search result for that stretch of the street.

訪問のヒント: A public street; the sources do not say whether the house survives.

Rembrandt died on Friday, 4 October 1669, and four days later he was buried in a rented grave in the Westerkerk. The exact location of the grave is unknown: its number was lost. His lover Hendrickje Stoffels and his son Titus were also buried here. A memorial marker on the north wall, made in 1909 after a model on the Nachtwacht, is hung with flowers every year on his birthday, 15 July.

場所の精度: The grave is lost; the pin marks the Westerkerk, where the memorial marker hangs.

訪問のヒント: The Westerkerk is on Prinsengracht; check opening times before you go.

The square grew from a medieval city gateway into the Botermarkt, a butter market, by 1655. Today it is a nightlife centre with a cast-iron statue of Rembrandt made in 1852 by sculptor Louis Royer, Amsterdam's oldest surviving statue in a public space. Bronze figures from The Night Watch once stood around it, but they were removed on 12 February 2020.

訪問のヒント: An open public square, easy to reach by tram lines 4, 9 and 14.