The National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden

Recently I wrote a post about visit to Amsterdam's archeological museum and at the back of my mind I always had friend's suggestion to check out the one on Leiden which is supposedly much bigger and more interesting. Now, you would expect that Amsterdam has much bigger collection than one in some small provincial town, but Leiden is apparently university town full of interesting things to see and only 30 minutes away, their archeological museum actually genuinely blew me away. 

The collection started as a private inheritance bequeathed to Leiden University. And then it just grew and grew until today we have a spectacular building in the centre of the old town, where on three floors you have archeological artifacts creating the stories about Ancient Egypt, Etruscans, Ancient Greece, Rome, Prehistoric Netherlands, etc. I must mention how cleverly they put a roof above the original old house, creating extra space on the very top - it is a marvellous and very intelligent design. I went there with two friends who live nearby and accordingly, never bothered to visit the place before - we had a great time and I loved that they both enjoyed it so much. The very first thing we saw on the entrance was magnificent ancient Egyptian temple called Temple of Taffeh and this is a real deal, Egyptian temple given as a gift from Egypt and transported here in 1971, rebuilt stone by stone. It was done as a gratitude because The Netherlands helped to save numerous archeological sites from floods with buildings of Aswan High Dam - here we have a real Egyptian temple from Roman times, built during the emperor Augustus.

I knew we made a mistake immediately when we spent too much time on the ground floor - it is a matter of pacing yourself, because if you get too carried away on the start, you will probably loose attention later. But Ancient Egypt was so fascinating that we just couldn't skip it. Than Greece, Rome, Stone Age Netherlands and on top of this, two more current exhibitions - one about mysterious stone temples in Malta and another about so called "Doggerland" that thousands of years ago connected continental Europe with England (in the period of low sea levels). We have spent four hours in the museum and it was fantastic - I am already making plans to visit again and explore the building from the different direction, perhaps from the top floor downwards. Or perhaps only a floor at the time. Brilliant.