-The Building from the Exterior

The renovation by the Spanish architectural agency Cruz y Ortiz Architectos has transformed the building into a magnificent twenty-first century museum. It features a large, light entrance hall, a new Asian Pavilion and beautifully refurbished galleries. In several of the museum's main spaces, a team led by Van Hoogevest restoration architects has fully reconstructed Pierre Cuypers’ rich decorative programme. In his design for the new gallery interiors, Parisian-based architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte has achieved a synthesis between the original nineteenth-century grandeur and a modern sensibility.

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Present and Past

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Cuypers definitieve ontwerptekening uit 1878-custom

Cuypers’ definitive architectural plan from 1878

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The Rijksmuseum lightened up during an art project by Germaine Kruip, 2005

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Rijksmuseum as seen from the north-west, c. 1910

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Perspective section of the Rijksmuseum, 1890

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Front façade of the Rijksmuseum with the Singel canal in the foreground, 1888

The building

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Gebouw