1 of 71

Our third route, much longer than the others, begins behind the Town Hall at the Corn Bridge (Coornbrug)..

2 of 71

The medieval bridge’s roofs built in 1825 protected wheat brought to market.

3 of 71

During the summer, restaurants along the Nieuwe Rijn River serve outdoors on floating terraces.

4 of 71

From the bridge, the Castle Alley (Burchtsteeg) leads to an archway giving entrance to the round castle (Den Burcht).

5 of 71

The castle is built on a man-made hill from the ninth century. The stone walls are around 750 years old.

6 of 71

The Hooglandsekerk seen from the Burcht castle.

7 of 71

At the foot of the castle hill, the 17th-century hotel from post-coach days is now the public library. The stables are a restaurant. The Van der Sterre Path next to the restaurant leads to the Oude Rijn River.

8 of 71

Across the Old Rhine (Oude Rijn) River, the massive 18th-cent. grain warehouse for providing bread for the poor still feeds the homeless.

9 of 71

The Hooglandsekerkgracht, a former canal, was filled in 1608. Walk around the church keeping to the right.

10 of 71

The Hooglandsekerkgracht at night.

11 of 71

Sculpture over the entrance to Leiden’s former orphanage.

12 of 71

We pass shops built in the 17th century while walking towards the Nieuwe Straat (New Street) – new around seven hundred years ago.

13 of 71

The Leiden American Pilgrim Museum is located at Beschuitsteeg 9, in front of the clock tower of the Hooglandsekerk.

14 of 71

Looking over roofs towards the church.

15 of 71

The south transept of the Hooglandsekerk.

16 of 71

The church has services on Sundays. It is also open for visitors during the week in summertime, with frequent organ recitals and art exhibits.

17 of 71

The church organ combines an earlier organ (ca. 1560) with additions from 1637-1638.

18 of 71

Some interesting 17th-century façades on the Nieuwe Straat are worth a brief detour before following the street around behind the church.

19 of 71

Walk around the church to the right. Exceptionally large upper windows open up between aisle roofs behind small gables that don’t line up with the windows beneath them.

20 of 71

Turn into the Hooglandsekerk Choorsteeg (alley), where the house on the corner may have belonged to the Lee family, who were Pilgrims.

21 of 71

In the alley, the Bonte Koe (dappled cow) pub occupies a former butcher’s shop.

22 of 71

Inside, the Bonte Koe’s walls are covered with pictorial tiles more than a century old.

23 of 71

As we cross the Hooigracht, a wide street that was once a canal, the 17th-century house once occupied by the physicist Hendrik Anton Lorenz is on our left.

24 of 71

Straight across the street from the Hooglandsekerk Choorsteeg, continue through the Kloosterpoort, an archway next to a finely carved rococo door.

25 of 71

At the end of the Kloosterpoort alley is the Middelstegracht. One of Leiden’s many poems is painted on the wall here – this one by Guillaume Apollinaire. Our route turns right.

26 of 71

The Schachten Almshouse was built in 1671.

27 of 71

A view of the almshouse quadrangle, with the communal water pump.

28 of 71

A little farther along the street, opposite the Schachten Almshouse, a small doorway can be pushed open to visit the St. Anna Almshouse, Leiden’s oldest. The chapel dates from ca. 1500.

29 of 71

Return along the Middlestegracht and walk to the far end. Midway is the Groenesteeg (green alley). Pilgrim William White and his family lived on a corner house here (which one is unknown).

30 of 71

In the last block of the Middlestegracht, the Weaver’s House Museum preserves a medieval house altered in the 17th century.

31 of 71

The weaver’s house has a long hallway leading to a rear house. The last resident, a perpetual university student, lived here for decades, without modern improvements.

32 of 71

The rear room of the front house has not been redecorated for over a hundred years. The unheated front room is used for weaving demonstrations.

33 of 71

At the end of the street, turn right. Across the Oude Rijn River, three weavers’ houses in a row remain from the 17th century. Looms filled each front room.

34 of 71

Parallel with the Middelstegracht, the Uiterstegracht still has a row of the smallest sort of 17th-century dwelling – one room with a loft.

35 of 71

One street further, along the river, we come to Leiden’s harbor. Our walk takes us towards the town gate indicated by the cupola on the right. Boat tours of the area’s lake district start from the pier.

36 of 71

The bridges and their associated buildings were designed during the 1930s in the Amsterdam version of Art Deco. Pass upwind of the monument on the right, whose sign attests to the bilingual skills of the average Leidener.

37 of 71

The Zijlpoort (town gate) was built in 1667-1668.

38 of 71

The Zijlpoort is flanked by one of the town bastions later used as a cemetery. Across the water, a reconstructed bastion is now a park.

39 of 71

Trees and flowers grow along the defensive town moat.

40 of 71

Walking back into town, turn right at the first street, then left. A complete row of weavers’ houses shows us what many new streets were like three hundred fifty years ago.

41 of 71

Turn left to return to the harbor. More weavers’ houses survive.

42 of 71

Again crossing the bridge, veer to the right to follow Oude Vest street beside the water of the Oude Singel (old town moat).

43 of 71

In the second block, a 19th-century archway was once the entry to Leiden’s steam brewery, The Posthorn.

44 of 71

The little brewery alley is now residential.

45 of 71

Farther along the Oude Vest, Leiden’s largest almshouse, the Meermansburg (founded 1681), is entered through an imposing classical archway.

46 of 71

The almshouse garden centers on a water pump with a sculptured Meerman – half man, half fish. The same armorial motif is carved in architectural decorations added in the late 18th century.

47 of 71

Several 19th-century factories have distinguished fronts on the Oude Single. De Vries & Stevens mixes steel frame construction with ornament in the Holland Renaissance style.

48 of 71

An early 17th-century mansion, repaired in the 19th century.

49 of 71

Looking back along the Oude Vest. The white building with lights is Leiden’s theater, founded in 1705. The present design is from 1865. The domed Marekerk dominates the neighborhood.

50 of 71

A brief excusion in the Mare street takes us to the entrance of the Mare Kerk, built 1639-1659 to designs by Arent van ‘s Gravezand.

51 of 71

Continuing along the Oude Vest, another former factory from the 19th century is the Scheltema Building. Art manifestations are presented here by the municipal museum “De Lakenhal.”

52 of 71

The town’s museum “De Lakenhal” occupies the mid-17th-century cloth guild hall. Local painters include Cornelis Engebrechtsz., Lucas van Leyden, Rembrandt, Jan Steen, and Jan van Goyen.

53 of 71

The museum collection includes re-used architectural fragments, such as this doorway dated 1560 and the town coat-of-arms above it.

54 of 71

Reaching the end of the Oude Singel, the windmill museum “De Valk” is to our right. We turn left, however, crossing the bridge.

55 of 71

A gable stone in the wall of a house across the street from the end of the Oude Singel depicts Joshua and Caleb returning from the Promised Land.

56 of 71

Over the bridge, turn left into the first alley. One of Leiden’s wall poems marks the turn.

57 of 71

The St. Elisabeth’s Hospital was founded in 1428.

58 of 71

Following the alley, which jogs to the right, brings us to the Zion Almshouse (1667).

59 of 71

Turning along the front of the almshouse we come to the Haarlemmerstraat, a major shopping street. The entrance to the St. Steven’s Almshouse is to the right.

60 of 71

A view in the Stevens Almshouse, with the spire of the chapel of the St. Elisabeth’s Hospital.

61 of 71

Farther along the Haarlemmerstraat on the other side of the street, a rare survival of the narrow houses of the middle ages is only nine feet wide.

62 of 71

We return along the Haarlemmerstraat until the Vrouwekerksteeg, an alley that gives a view of the dome of the Marekerk.

63 of 71

A jumble of ancient roofs along the Vrouwesteeg.

64 of 71

At the end of the alley, the Boerhaave Museum presents the history of science, especially medicine. The building has been a convent, hospital, and insane asylum.

65 of 71

The remains of the Vrouwekerk dominate the Vrouwekerk Square. The medieval Church of Our Lady was granted to the French Reformed in 1586. The building was torn down in stages in the 19th century and in the 1990s.

66 of 71

The ruin is a national monument. Members of this church were among the first European settlers of New England in 1620 and New Amsterdam (now New York) in 1624.

67 of 71

A short alley at the corner of the Vrouwekerk Square returns us to the Haarlemmerstraat. A type-founder's house displays an unusual monument (1630) to the man the Dutch used to believe invented moveable type, Haarlem's Laurens Koster.

68 of 71

Beyond the Hartebrugkerk, numerous 17th-cent. houses with stepped gables face the Mare (a former river, now bridged over as a street).

69 of 71

A short walk takes us to the Rijn River, where the Old and New Rhine come together. A boat tour of Leiden’s canals begins here.

70 of 71

The boat tour, on its route through the city.

71 of 71

Our walk ends at the confluence of New and Old Rhine Rivers. A restaurant in medieval cellars expands onto a floating terrace in the summer.