Vincent Holland Tours

23/04/2024

Flower season!

11/09/2022

Today’s tour, with Dean Angott, who’s father Tom, was a waistgunner in a B-17 bomber, that crashed near Lisse on September 26, 1944 after a mision to Osnabruck Germany. He managed to abandon the aircraft in a parachute and landed in the Kaag lake. He was pulled out of the water by a small boat and brought to Kaag island. From there the resistance brought him to Warmond, tugged under the bow of a sailing boat, he heard German soldiers yelling and calling, searching for the American crew members. Tom Angott spent the remainder of the war fighting the N***s on the ground instead of the air, as a Resistance Fighter in the Dutch underground in Leiden.

04/04/2022

Closed on Mondays, so our group has the whole museum for ourselves.

13/03/2022

Today's bike trip Amsterdam south

25/02/2022

Van Gogh museum today, making pictures is allowed now.

31/12/2021

Last guided walk for this year. Wish you all a happy and healthy 2022!

07/07/2021

Finally, first tour again, after 14 months!

26/03/2021

This week, Virginia abolished the death penalty as first southern US state, exactly 69 years after the last ex*****on in the Netherlands. The capital punishment was already abolished in 1870, but during WW2 reintroduced by the N***s. After liberation, the Dutch government decided to neutralize that law, but to make an exception for a few high-ranking N**i officers and some Dutch collaborators. The government was afraid the population would take the law into its own hands. In total, 39 persons were executed by firing squad after the war.....

After the ex*****ons, the bodies were hanged on a field usually at the riverside, and became birdfood. It had to scare off new visitors entering the city; ‘this is what we will do to you if you don’t behave’.

15/05/2020

On many Jewish cemeteries in The Netherlands, one can often find gravestones with date of death 1940 May 15, or the days after. Hundreds of Jewish and non-Jewish people, tried to commit su***de when the main Dutch forces surrendered on May 15, five days after the German invasion. On average in The Netherlands, there were 60 su***des per month in in the 1930’s and 1940’s. In May 1940 the number was 388. Many of them have tried to flee to England but that was not an easy operation and many Dutch skippers asked astronomical prices. Many of the Dutch Jews had fled Germany and Austria in the 1930s. The N**i's engendered such fear, that its effect reached the Jewish people in The Netherlands even before the N**i's actually murdered three out of every four Dutch Jews. In some graves are complete families, with young children.

12/05/2020

Today the Rijksmuseum website published the biggest and most detailed picture of the Nightwatch ever made. You can zoom in and see every brushstroke and surprising detail. For instance, the three crosses, the coat of arms of Amsterdam, on the mantle of the Luitenant. You can find it between the shadows of his thumb and fingers. http://hyper-resolution.org/view.html?pointer=0.592,0.003&i=Rijksmuseum/SK-C-5/SK-C-5_VIS_20-um_2019-12-21

20/01/2020

A new self-portrait by Van Gogh has come to light officially. It has been in the museum in Oslo already for a century, but the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam authenticated the painting today, where it will be until spring 2021. Vincent started making self-portraits to practise with colour and brushstrokes. On almost all Rembrandt’s self-portraits, Rembrandt looks to his right. Vincent however, made self-portraits looking to his right and to his left. Rembrandt sold his self-portraits. Vincent’s portraits were all trial runs, not for the market. That is why many of his portraits have a painting on the backside as well, and why Van Gogh signed only one self-portrait out of the forty that are known.

05/07/2019

Two paintings were stolen from the Van Gogh museum in 2002. Among them, this painting of the church were his father was the minister. Vincent made this in 1885 and gave it to his mother, who was not able to visit the church because she had a broken leg. A few months later, Vincent’s father died and Vincent changed the painting. He added a group of people in mourning clothes, and autumn leaves to the trees. This was the first painting that Vincent ever gave to his parents. Now the painting is back on view in the museum.