The Director's Residence

Gerlacus Ribbius Peletier was not a man who did things quietly. In 1870, he built himself a home on this spot along Oudegracht that was, by any measure, absurdly grand for a frontage of just seven meters wide. Step back a little and take in the building in front of you. You cannot go inside, but if you could, you would find a double staircase flanked by carved caryatids, those sculpted female figures holding up the architecture, and arched ceilings that would not look out of place in a French palace.

The house changed hands over the decades, passing through families with names like Lebret and Van Baaren, but it kept its elegance until the Second World War. During the occupation, the building was used as a local headquarters for the NSB, the Dutch Nazi party. That particular chapter tends to quiet a room.

After the war, the staircase that Ribbius Peletier had built to impress guests ended up as a bicycle shed. The hall became a clothing factory. The marble cracked, the gold disappeared under layers of paint, and the municipality that eventually bought it in the 1970s could never afford to fix it properly.