Science nerds, this one’s for you! And of course, for those with a taste for the unsettling, this museum will not disappoint. Named after Dutch physician and botanist, Herman Boerhaave, there are various rooms to visit in the museum. It holds over 4000 years of advances in medical knowledge, having started out as a nunnery and then a “plague hospital and madhouse”. The building was converted to a university hospital in 1653. In 1720, Herman Boerhaave held a series of lectures that are famous for being “sickbed lessons”, for he believed in the principal of teaching his students hands-on.

The museum now presents the idea of “life after death” with its exhibits. One of the most interesting is the Leiden Anatomical Theatre, a reconstruction of a wooden theatre that made the city famous in Europe in the early days when medicine was still developing. Peer at the paintings on the wall, ones necessary for surgery, including one of a woman who underwent surgery after swallowing a sword. Head down to the museum to see with your own eyes the wonderful collection of old scientific instruments as well as various specimens on display (the skeleton dioramas are hard to miss).