Temple of Taffeh

An actual ancient Egyptian temple, reassembled inside the entrance hall of the Museum of Antiquities (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden). The Temple of Taffeh dates from the 1st century AD and was originally built on the banks of the Nile in Nubia. Walking into a museum and finding a complete sandstone temple is a genuine surprise, and the scale is impressive — this is not a fragment or a replica.

The rest of the Museum of Antiquities is excellent too, with strong Egyptian, Greek, and Roman collections, but the temple is the showstopper. Free to see from the museum's ground floor atrium even without a ticket, though the full museum is worth the admission.

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A story
When the Aswan High Dam threatened to flood dozens of Nubian temples in the 1960s, Egypt gifted several to countries that helped with the rescue effort. The Netherlands received Taffeh. The temple was dismantled block by block, shipped to Leiden, and reassembled inside the museum in 1979.

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