The double mansion on Herengracht the House Willet-Holthuysen has important historic interiors. There are salons in Neo-Louis XVI style and the garden is designed as a symmetrical French style garden. The house takes its name from the couple who lived here at the end of the 19th century: Abraham Willet and Louisa Holthuysen. After the widow’s death in 1895, they donated the house and collection to the city Amsterdam, with the intention that it would become a museum.
Baroque garden
The early eighteenth-century garden designs of the French architect Daniël Marot have served as a source of inspiration for the current garden. The graceful symmetrical patterns and trimmed hedges and trees refer to the baroque gardens of canal houses and country estates. Today it is one of the few formal gardens in the center of Amsterdam.
Historic tulips
In the garden you find single, double and feathered tulips, plain, flamed and striped tulips, single, double and spray daffodils, orange and yellow imperial crowns, grape hyacinths and hyacinths. The flowering period runs from late March to mid-May. Like in earlier years historical tulips from the time of the Willet-Holthuysen couple take a central position: ‘Duchesse de Parma’ (1820) red with yellow, ‘pink with a yellow edge ‘Je Maintiendrai’ (1863), the orange ‘Simon Bolivar ( 1883), ‘Princess Elisabeth’ (1898) pink flamed, the fragrant blue ‘Bleu Aimable’ (1906) and the purple-white flamed ‘Insulinde’ (1915).
Opening hours
Monday to Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm,