The capital of the Netherlands is a city that does not know the word “no.” Tourists strive here not only to chastely ride bicycles, enjoy the picturesque views of the canals or enjoy the aroma of tulips. One of the reasons for the visit is to visit very extraordinary exhibitions. If you also crave cultural enlightenment, we recommend the Sex Museum in Amsterdam. An excursion for adults should impress a person with humor and without complexes.
What do more than 500,000 tourists a year want to see?
If you trust the data on the official website of the Temple of Venus (this is the second name of the museum of sex), at least half a million visitors visit it every year. Such a deafening popularity this institution owes to its location near the famous Red Light District, spicy themes of expositions and banal human curiosity.
The Sex Museum, which should not be confused with the Erotic Museum in Amsterdam, was opened in 1985 by a group of enterprising Dutchmen. They rented a small room and presented several showcases of “erotic content” in it. In those days, no one could have imagined that a non-standard exhibition would make a splash and begin to quickly replenish with new exhibits. Today, the museum occupies three floors of a 17th-century mansion located on Amsterdam’s busiest street, and continues to attract those who want to personally make sure that they are in the “European center for debauchery and frivolous life.”
It is hard to imagine, but during the modernization of the building at the base of the foundation, a tiny bronze statuette of Hermes with outstanding masculine dignity and a fragment of porcelain tile with a man with an erection on it was found. Later it turned out that the Dutch merchant, a former owner of the house where the sex museum is located today, brought the figurine hundreds of years ago from a trip to the Mediterranean. And the tiles with erotic connotations once adorned the fireplace in his living room. It is a coincidence or an omen – who knows. But the fact is the fact: success accompanies the Temple of Venus from the moment of its formation.
An amusing trip
The halls of the museum are dedicated to a specific topic or era in the development of sexual culture. And each era had an inspiration – an exotic dancer and courtesan Mata Hari, silent film actor Rudolf Valentino, favorite of the French king Louis XV Marquise de Pompadour or a real 20th century idol Marilyn Monroe. The last you will meet in the notorious white dress, which periodically soars up, and at the time of the first photo shoot for Playboy magazine. Each hall is equipped with a selection of exhibits that are directly related to the main figure or her contemporaries.
The rooms are equipped with hidden speakers, from which muffled music sounds, creating the desired atmosphere. Exceptions were made for some rooms – for example, in the fact that it was “given” to the Marquis de Sade, the repeated sounds of a steam engine and the screams of a woman are heard, which cannot but please the dumbfounded visitors.
Over the long history of its existence, the museum has managed to collect thousands of works of art, sex artifacts (including very ancient ones), unique objects, figurines, caricatures, paintings and rare photographs. At the same time, he does not fall into straightforward pornography – he only hints slightly, intrigues and shocks. Even sexual attractions in the form of a naked woman suddenly jumping out of a wall or an exhibitionist frightening passers-by cause only a smile.
What really surprises is the imagination of people who can add eroticism to the most ordinary things: cake, corkscrew, plate, cane, oil lamp, chair. And where is the sex museum without toys, which can easily be read the history of relations between the sexes (and not only, because you are in Amsterdam).
There was no sex only in the USSR
The museum begins the story with Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, whose inhabitants sang love and eroticism in all their manifestations and invariably displayed their passions in sculpture, painting, etc.
Permissiveness is replaced by medieval prohibitions. Then voluptuousness was considered sinful, which is why the figurines symbolizing carnal joys in this period have the faces of the devil or the devil, and the wives of jealous warriors all wear “chastity belts”.
In the knightly era, everything sexual becomes fashionable again. Uncomplicated courtesan love inspires artists and sculptors to create works that glorify eroticism.
And again, they are trying to crush general immorality with the prohibitions of the prim Victorian era. But more and more people want to talk about sex and make decisions on their own – there are battles for gender equality, erotic and pornographic pictures, as well as frivolous glossy publications are popularized.
The theme of sex in ancient China and Japan, the owners of the museum gave a separate exposition. Worshiping the phallic symbols of the East has always encouraged its various images, as evidenced by numerous exhibits. What is there to argue if the newlyweds were given books on the wedding day with specific instructions for the actions that they should take on the wedding night.
And on the threshold of Venus itself
She is the first one you will see when you cross the threshold of the sex museum in Amsterdam. And this is a hint that inside you will find not a reverence for fornication, but a story of human sensuality. One will see her ringing vulgarity, the other – undisguised beauty. Do you like the exposure? Do not want to lose your mood? You can immediately proceed to the Erotic Museum in Amsterdam, the photos from the exposition of which can also be considered masterpieces.
Take a walk between the “delicate” pictures and imagine yourself a citizen from the beginning of the last century. He did not have access to the Internet with its unlimited possibilities, so he carefully and enthusiastically examined the pictures with vicious women with the help of a stereoscope. Enjoy the collection of playing cards and cards with scenes from the life of sadomasochists. Do not miss the work of the Austrian artist of the Habsburg reign, Peter Fendi, immersing representatives of the higher world in sexual fantasies. Pay attention to playful comics, a rich collection of films and cartoons, figures of brothel workers and miniature porcelain compositions, get the phone sex service, calmly use your camera and take nothing seriously.
- The Sex Museum in Amsterdam is open every day from 9:30 to 23:30.
- Its address is Damrak Street 18. It is three hundred meters from the Central Station and a five-minute walk from Dam Square.
- Entrance to the sex museum in Amsterdam is permitted for people over 16 years of age. Ticket price – 5 euros.
