Qualla: Westfries Museum

Westfries Museum: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. On the night of 9 January 2005, while the staff in Hoorn were preparing to celebrate the Westfries Museum's 125th anniversary the next morning, four men slipped inside, walked through 25 galleries hung with Golden Age paintings, and walked out with 24 of them, plus most of the silver collection. Some of those paintings would surface in Ukraine in 2016. Another would appear in a Kraków apartment in 2024. The rest, including a Jan van Goyen from the master's youth, are still missing. The museum closed for renovation in 2023 and is rebuilding its foundations from below. Somewhere in the world, the missing pictures still hang on someone's wall.

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Image: Public domain

Westfries Museum: The Building Itself

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arch, Public domain. Before the museum, the building was government. Roode Steen 15 was the meeting house of the Gecommitteerde Raden van West-Friesland en het Noorderkwartier - the regional council that managed the affairs of West Friesland and the northern quarter under the States of Holland. Compl...

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Image: Arch | Public domain

Westfries Museum: The Heist on the Anniversary

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jan Claesz Rietschoof, Public domain. Begin with the timing. The museum was throwing itself a 125th birthday party on 10 January 2005. The night before, four people entered the building and removed twenty-four paintings from the walls of twenty-five rooms - works that had been in the collection for generations - alon...

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Image: Jan Claesz Rietschoof | Public domain

Westfries Museum: Ukraine, Kraków, Wherever

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dqfn13, CC BY-SA 4.0. It took eleven years for the paintings to begin reappearing. In 2016 five of the stolen works were located in Ukraine, where they had been used as collateral, traded between buyers who likely understood exactly what they were holding. Three were recovered in damaged condition. Th...

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Image: Dqfn13 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Westfries Museum: What the Collection Was - and Will Be Again

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dqfn13, CC BY-SA 3.0. Set the heist aside for a moment. The Westfries Museum at its best is a portrait of a 17th-century port town. Twenty-five rooms held VOC-related objects from the company's Hoorn chamber, military regalia from the schutterij civic guard, painted views of the harbour as it looked w...

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Image: Dqfn13 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Westfries Museum: Hoorn from the Air

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michielverbeek, CC BY-SA 3.0. From above, Hoorn presents itself like a Golden Age townscape come to life - the Hoofdtoren guarding the inner harbour, the dense terracotta roofs of the old city pressed against the dyke, the open water of the Markermeer stretching away to the southeast. The Roode Steen, the sma...

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Image: Michielverbeek | CC BY-SA 3.0