Netherlands Guide
The north and the Frisian Islands
The Fries Museum
Opening time: Tues– Sun 11am–5pm
Price: €6
Website: www.friesmuseum.nl
The Fries Museum is one of the Netherlands' best regional museums, which traces the development of Frisian culture from prehistoric times up until the present day. It also incorporates the Frisian Resistance Museum, with its story of the local resistance to Nazi occupation, and an exhibition on the infamous Mata Hari.
The museum's extensive collection of silver is concentrated in the basement of the adjacent Kanselarij, next to the entrance. Silversmithing was a flourishing Frisian industry throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most of the work commissioned by the local gentry, who were influenced by the fashions of the Frisian Stadholder and his court.
The top floor of the Kanselarij has a chronological exhibition tracing the early days of the Nazi invasion, through collaboration and resistance on to the Allied liberation. A variety of photographs, Nazi militaria, Allied propaganda and tragic personal stories illustrate the text, but the emphasis is very much on the local struggle rather than the general war effort.
Back by the ticket desk downstairs, a passage leads through to the museum's second building, the Eysingahuis, where you'll find the exhibition on Mata Hari. A native of Leeuwarden, Mata Hari's name has become synonymous with the image of the femme fatale. A renowned dancer, she was arrested in 1917 by the French on charges of espionage and subsequently shot. Photographs, letters and other mementoes illustrate the rather pathetic story.
Upstairs, on the first floor, the most interesting rooms are those devoted to the painted furniture of Hindeloopen: rich, gaudy and intense, patterned with tendrils and flowers on a red, green or white background. Most peculiar of all are examples of the bizarre headgear of eighteenth-century Hindeloopen women: large cartwheel-shaped hats known as Duitse muts and the less specifically Frisian oorijzers, gold or silver helmets that were an elaborate development of the hat-clip or brooch.