Leiden's Dark Side: Plague, Poison and an Exploding Ship

The postcards won't mention any of this. A prison on the church square. A ship that took a neighbourhood with it. A woman everyone loved. Six dark chapters — and the exact spots where they happened.

By Leiden Secret Stories · August 2026 · 9 min read

Every old city has two histories. The sunny one gets printed. The other one stays where it happened — in facades, in courtyards, in two small brass stones most shoppers step over. This is a walk through the other history. It gets darker as it gets closer. So did the city.

1The Gravensteen — where justice had a gallery

The white building beside the Pieterskerk looks almost cheerful. Do not be fooled. For centuries this was the count's stronghold, then the city's prison. Trials inside. Punishment outside, in public, on a square that was also the churchyard. Justice, faith and death sharing one address. The most chilling detail is on the facade itself, in plain sight — an elegant little gallery with a terrible job. The book tells you what happened from it.

2Van der Werfpark — the double wound

A quiet park. Two of the most dramatic days in Dutch history happened on this ground, 233 years apart. First the siege: in 1574 Leiden starved behind its walls, and when desperate citizens demanded surrender, mayor Pieter Adriaanszoon van der Werff is said to have offered them his own body to eat instead. Legend? Partly. The hunger was real. Then, on 12 January 1807, a ship loaded with gunpowder exploded in the middle of the city and flattened the neighbourhood. The park exists because the street didn't survive. His statue still stands in it.

3The plague house — the address of last resort

One street off the Haarlemmerstraat, a hidden courtyard. The Caeciliagasthuis: Leiden's plague house and madhouse, the hospital for patients nobody else would take. Then a doctor named Herman Boerhaave started teaching at the bedsides here, and students crossed a continent to stand in the one building they were warned about. The teacher of all Europe, in the house of the dying. Today the building holds the national museum of science and medicine — the anatomy theatre on the exact spot where plague patients once lay. Few museums are so precisely placed.

4Goeie Mie's streets — loved above all others

In the 1880s these were poor streets. Crowded streets. One woman was loved above all others. She nursed the sick. She minded the children. She sat with the dying. They called her Goeie Mie — Good Mie. She was also quietly insuring her neighbours' lives. And then helping them collect. Maria Swanenburg, born near this alley in 1839. The street remembers, even if the houses have moved on.

5The Weeshuis — four centuries of children

On the Hooglandse Kerkgracht — a filled-in canal, one of the city's most serene streets — stands a gate that nearly four centuries of children walked through. Leiden's Holy Ghost orphanage. From the late 1500s until 1961. Read that end date again. There are people alive today, walking these same streets, who spent their childhood behind this facade. The building is now a cultural home with an exhibition of the orphans' personal stories. Quiet place. Loud history.

6Two brass stones — three generations, one address

In front of what is now a sushi shop lie two small brass stones. Most shoppers step over them. They mark the jewellery shop of Hartog and Vronika van Amerongen. During the occupation the couple was targeted by the local Dutch Nazi organisation. Vronika dared to confront its uniformed men and was imprisoned on an insult charge. A party official installed himself as "administrator" of the family shop and stripped it. In 1943, Hartog and Vronika were murdered at Sobibor. Their son Levie survived the war. He was murdered here, at the same address, in 1978. Two stones. Three generations. Stop for these.