The Mauritshuis, The - Tapa dura

This gem of a museum, housed in a graceful seventeenth-century lake-side mansion in The Hague, has a fine collection of Dutch and Flemish art. King William I gave the collection to the Dutch state after it was returned from France, and the house and its contents were officially opened as a museum in 1822. Among its treasures are self portraits by Rembrandt as well as The anatomy lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, Vermeer's View of Delft (recently restored), and paintings by Holbein, Rubens, Frans Hals and Van Dyck. Also present are some of the finest examples of landscape and still life paintings to have been produced in the Dutch Golden Age.