Museum Paul Tétar van Elven

Museum Paul Tétar van Elven showcases the 19th-century home and collection of artist Paul Tétar van Elven, featuring paintings, antique furniture, and Delftware.

Planning your visit

Paul Tetar van Elven was a nineteenth-century painter and teacher who lived on the Koornmarkt in Delft, and when he died in 1894 he left his house and everything in it to the city on condition that it be opened as a museum — which it was, and it has changed remarkably little since.

That is the appeal. This is not a collection assembled by curators but one man's home preserved with his taste intact: his own paintings and copies after old masters, antique furniture, Japanese and Chinese porcelain, and a substantial collection of Delftware, arranged as he arranged them.

The house itself is a seventeenth-century canal property with a garden behind, and the atmosphere of a private nineteenth-century interior survives in a way that reconstructed period rooms never quite manage.

Delft is small and walkable, with Vermeer connections and the Nieuwe Kerk holding the royal vault.

Bookable options are entry tickets. Current availability is listed below.