Discover
The ARTIS-Groote Museum is a place to explore the connection with yourself, your body, and all other life on Earth.
What is there to see and do?
From communicating plants to a competition with a chimpanzee to a scent tunnel that pricks memories and stirs your emotions, get ready for a personal expedition crisscrossing the museum.
What is the Groote Museum?
Why do you exist? Where did you come you from? What makes you, you? How are you different from a gorilla, or a wood violet? And are you really that different at all? All living things share the same home: our world. How do you see that world? Is it something outside of you, or inside you as well? Deepen your perspective and never stop questioning.
The building
The Groote Museum first opened in 1855 for members of the zoological society Natura Artis Magistra. Once the pinnacle of modernity in Amsterdam, today the building occupies the oldest part of ARTIS. The museum, which closed in 1947, has now been fully renovated and restored. The original split staircase has been brought back to its former glory and every glass door of the displays remounted in its old position. Even the wooden floors are the same as those on which Society members walked in 1855. Inside, the building is a veritable time capsule.