The story
Enschede made its money in cotton. In the 1920s Jan Bernard van Heek, from one of the textile families that ran the town, decided his private collection should belong to the whole country, and he paid for a building to hold it. The architects Karel Muller and Anton Beudt gave him something that looks like a small medieval monastery, brick galleries around quiet courtyards, and it opened in 1930 as a national museum in a corner of the Netherlands most visitors never reach.
Inside, the range is wide for a provincial city. There are 15th- and 16th-century panels and portraits, a strong run of 17th-century Dutch painting, French Impressionist canvases, and rooms of contemporary work. In May 2000 a fireworks depot on the edge of town exploded and destroyed a nearby district. The museum building was damaged, but the collection had been protected and came through intact. The galleries were repaired, and the cloister-like corridors still frame the walk from one century of Dutch painting to the next.
