Welcome to Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar

Welcome to Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar, one of the Netherlands’ oldest museums. The museum presents a collection of fine and applied art that transports you to the past, at a time of great prosperity, with seventeenth-century masterpieces by such artists as Pieter Saenredam, Salomon van Ruysdael and Caesar van Everdingen, key works from the Bergen School (Leo Gestel, Dirk Filarski, Charley Toorop) and fascinating temporary exhibitions. In the basement you can experience the seven weeks of the Siege of Alkmaar (1573) day by day, based on the surviving eye-witness report by the city councillor Nanning van Foreest.

The Museum Café
Everything we serve in our museum café is sustainable or organic. We make our soups ourselves, and our bread and pastries are baked by small, eco-friendly suppliers in Alkmaar. The terrace is open in the summer and has a view of Great St Lawrence’s Church and the square. Like the museum shop, you can visit the café without a ticket to the museum.

Te museum shop
Our museum shop carries a wide range of art and history books and all our exhibition catalogues, as well as souvenirs, luxury specialities and designer gifts.

Always on show

Alkmaar’s Golden Age
Be overwhelmed by the finest works by Old Masters like Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, Maarten van Heemskerck, Pieter Jansz Saenredam and Caesar van Everdingen. The paintings are set off by an exceptional collection of furniture, fine silver and seventeenth-century glassware.

The Bergen School
Visit the permanent Bergen School exhibition with artists like Charley Toorop, Leo Gestel, Arnout Colnot, Piet and Matthieu Wiegman, Gerrit Willem van Blaaderen and Dirk Filarski.

Victory!
The interactive historical exhibition about the Siege of Alkmaar will fascinate the whole family. Live the siege from day to day.

Pieter Saenredam, Interior of Great St Lawrence’s Church in Alkmaar, looking from the Nave to the West, undated (1661-65?), oil on canvas, Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar | Alkmaar's Golden Age

Temporary exhibitions

From 18 september - 16 januari 2022

Allart van Everdingen (1621-1675)
The Rugged Landscape

In 1644 a young Alkmaar artist, Allart van Everdingen, spent a few months travelling around Norway. Back in Holland, he worked up his impressions of the Scandinavian landscape in paintings, drawings and prints. These scenes of log cabins and waterfalls in rugged regions had never been seen before in the Dutch art market and became Allart’s trademark. But he had more to offer: dramatic seascapes and river views, typical Dutch landscapes and prints illustrating the tale of Reynard the Fox.

In his four hundredth anniversary year, Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar presents the first retrospective of this multifaceted artist. Join him on his travels and admire his landscapes.

Mountain Landscape with a River and a Castle, oil on canvas, on loan from the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Reynard the Fox

Allart van Everdingen (1621-1675)

Tales of Reynard the sly fox have been told since medieval times. He tricks other animals, but always escapes punishment. Around 1670, Allart van Everdingen made a series of fifty-seven prints chronicling Reynard’s adventures, with lifelike animals in magnificent landscapes. He sketched many preparatory designs for these etchings. Working material like this was usually discarded once it had served its purpose, but in this case it has survived. Here, for the first time, a selection of Allart’s Reynard prints is displayed alongside his drawings. It shows us how the artist worked.

The Fight between Reynard the Fox and Isengrim the Wolf, etching, third state, on loan from the Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Paris (Auguste and Eugène Dutuit Bequest, 1902)

In Allart’s Footsteps
Photographer Pascal Vossen in Scandinavia

In the autumn of 2019, the photographer Pascal Vossen (1983) travelled through the southern coastal region of Sweden and Norway. Commissioned by Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar, he went to places that the Alkmaar artist Allart van Everdingen (1621-1675) visited in 1644—the waterfalls at Mölndal and Trollhättan, Bohus Fortress and the coastal towns of Risør and Langesund, all of which were in Norwegian territory at that time. Pascal took photographs of subjects and locations that Allart captured in works of art, but at the same time recorded the way contemporary visitors and inhabitants relate to the spectacular Scandinavian landscape. What impact do they have on their surroundings?

Langesund, September 2019, digital photograph, printed on photographic paper, mounted on Dibond

Visit Alkmaar

Alkmaar is an attractive city of culture with a rich history. It has several museums and splendid monuments including the Grote or Sint Laurenskerk. The many original boutiques in the ‘old town’ make Alkmaar a true shoppers’ paradise. After a day visiting museums and shopping, you can enjoy the friendly cafés and restaurants. And of course you don’t want to miss the famous cheese market between April and September!
Tourist Information

Alkmaar, Luttik Oudorp | Photo Ritske Velstra