H'ART Museum

This museum has had more identity crises than most people. The building — a stately classical structure on the Amstel river — opened in 1682 as the Diaconie Oude Vrouwen Huys, a retirement home for elderly women funded by the Dutch Reformed Church. For over three centuries, old women lived here in quiet dignity. Then in 2009, it reinvented itself as the Hermitage Amsterdam, a satellite of the legendary Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, showing rotating exhibitions of Russian imperial art and treasures.

That arrangement lasted exactly thirteen years. On March 3, 2022 — one week after Russia invaded Ukraine — the museum severed all ties with Saint Petersburg. The decision was swift and absolute: every piece of Russian art went back, every contract was cancelled, and the name was scrapped. In September 2023, the museum relaunched as H'ART Museum, a deliberate play on "heart" and "art" designed to make clear that Amsterdam and Saint Petersburg were done.

The pivot has been bold. H'ART now partners with the Smithsonian, Centre Pompidou, and the British Museum to curate exhibitions, assembling world-class shows with no dependence on any single foreign institution. The building itself — 300 years of quiet institutional history on the banks of the Amstel — provides a stunning backdrop for whatever collection fills its halls.

The Amstelhof building is worth admiring on its own. Its classical brick facade, dating to 1681, stretches along the river with the kind of sober elegance that Amsterdam does better than anyone. The courtyard garden is a hidden gem — peaceful and green, completely invisible from the street.