Panorama Mesdag in The Hague

At Panorama Mesdag you walk through a dark passage, climb a spiral staircase and suddenly find yourself on top of a dune. Around you stretches the beach of Scheveningen as it looked in 1881. Fishing boats lie on the sand, the sea rolls in and in the distance you see the village. It is one continuous painting, about 14 metres high and some 120 metres around. Hendrik Willem Mesdag made it with a few painter friends. The museum on the Zeestraat also shows work by Mesdag and his wife Sientje. Below you can read what you will see.

What you see in Panorama Mesdag

The highlight is the Panorama of Scheveningen, a 360 degree painting that you view from a platform in the middle. You stand on a recreated dune, and you can barely tell where the real sand ends and the painted sand begins. The canvas shows the Scheveningen coast in 1881, with bomschuiten (the local fishing boats), fishermen and the village behind the dunes. Mesdag painted it together with Bernard Blommers, Théophile de Bock and George Hendrik Breitner, with help from his wife Sientje Mesdag-van Houten. Downstairs hang paintings by the artist couple. There are also changing exhibitions in which other work is shown alongside the collection of the Mesdags.

The oldest panorama in its original place

In the 1870s panoramas were a real crowd puller. In 1880 a company backed by Belgian investors asked Mesdag for a seascape. He painted it from the Seinpostduin, then the highest dune in Scheveningen, and the panorama opened on 1 August 1881. According to the museum, Vincent van Gogh was among the visitors. The company went bankrupt in 1885, after which Mesdag bought the panorama himself. In 1910 and 1911 exhibition rooms were added in what had been the garden. The museum describes the Panorama of Scheveningen as the oldest surviving panorama still standing in its original location.

Tips for your visit to Panorama Mesdag

Your Museumkaart is valid, and you can follow a free audio tour on your own phone via a QR code. So bring earphones. Photography is allowed, but without flash, selfie stick or tripod. You reach the platform via a spiral staircase of 23 steps; there is a stair lift, but it has limitations because the staircase is a listed monument. Children aged 6 to 12 can pick up a free treasure hunt at the information desk, and there is a family audio tour. Take your time up on the platform: the longer you look, the more details you notice. Combine your visit with the beach at Scheveningen and you will see straight away what has changed since 1881.

Frequently asked questions about Panorama Mesdag

Read more