Netherlands Guide
Noord-Holland
The Frans Hals Museum
Opening time: Tues– Sat 11am–5pm, Sun noon–5pm
Price: €7
Website: www.franshalsmuseum.nl
Address: Groot Heiligland 62
Haarlem's biggest draw, the Frans Hals Museum, is a five-minute stroll south of the Grote Markt: to get there, take pedestrianized Warmoesstraat and keep going. The museum occupies an old almshouse complex, a much modified red-brick hofje with a central courtyard, where the aged Hals lived out his last destitute years on public funds. The collection comprises a handful of prime works by Hals along with a small but eclectic sample of Dutch paintings from the fifteenth century onwards, all immaculately presented and labelled in English and Dutch. There's also a small separate section consisting of a life-size replica of a seventeenth-century Haarlem street.