Museum Willet-Holthuysen occupies a house built in 1687 on Herengracht, one of the best-preserved examples of how the city's wealthiest merchant families lived during and after the Golden Age. The interiors run from a formal reception room to a kitchen below stairs, furnished largely with the collection assembled by the house's last owner, Louisa Holthuysen, who left the building and its contents to the city in 1895.
The garden behind the house, laid out in a formal 18th-century French style, is a quiet surprise — most of the Canal Ring's gardens are private and invisible from the street, so this is a rare chance to see one. A compact, manageable alternative to the Rijksmuseum for understanding the Golden Age domestic world the canal houses were built for.