Location

• Brill Publishing House and Printing PressBegun in 1683 as Jordaan Luchtmans's bookshop; since 1848 the firm has been called E.J. Brill. From 1883 to 1985 it sat here on the Oude Rijn, in a former orphanage. The printing house built up an enormous collection of Oriental types — from Arabic to Chinese characters — and published the Encyclopaedia of Islam. Brill still exists, and is still in Leiden.
• Children's Rights HouseFrom 1583 to 1961 this was Leiden's orphanage — 378 years. Since 2010 it has been the Kinderrechtenhuis, where Defence for Children and the Children's and Youth Legal Clinic work under one roof: where children were once cared for, the subject is now their rights.
• De BurchtAn artificial mound raised around the year 1000, twelve metres high and older than the city that grew around it. The stronghold on top was built to keep the town in check; since the city bought it in 1651 it has been a freely accessible park.
• Diaconal Center De BakkerijThe huiszittenhuis on the Oude Rijn, first recorded in 1427 and named after the Armenbakkerij the deacons built here. Since 1985 two churches have run it together, helping whoever needs it — asylum seekers and undocumented people included.
• First Turkish Mosque & ISN Mimar Sinan MosqueLeiden's first Turkish mosque, opened on the Hooigracht in 1985 by the Turkish Islamic Cultural Association. The adhan rang out openly here — Leiden was among the first Dutch cities where it could be heard. The community has been on the Curaçaostraat since 1992.
• First Turkish Tea HouseLeiden's first Turkish tea house, on the Doezastraat — not an official institution but a place the migrant workers made for themselves. They had come to Leiden's factories after the recruitment agreement of 1964, and here they found each other, and support in a new country.
• Former E.J. Brill BookstoreE.J. Brill's antiquarian bookshop sat here from 1948. Around 1990 Brill chose to confine itself to scholarly publishing and sold the shop to Rijk Smitskamp: it did not close but became Het Oosters Antiquarium, specialising in Oriental manuscripts and early printed books. It closed in 2006; its business archive went to the University Library.
• Former Islamic Center Leiden (ICL), Now Al HijraThe Stichting Moslimgroep Leiden was founded in 1978, seven years before the city's first Turkish mosque: the community organised itself before it had a building. In 1982 it moved into premises on the Rembrandtstraat left behind by the Apostolisch Genootschap, and in 2018 it moved on to the Ter Haarplein. Al-hijra means the departure — the name of a community that has itself moved.
• Former Turkish Honorary ConsulateBuilt as a branch of the Nederlandsche Bank and taken into use in 1918, to a design the young J.J.P. Oud worked on — shortly afterwards a co-founder of De Stijl. From 2010 to 2020 the honorary consulate of Turkey sat here, carried by one man: honorary consul-general Joost Peters. When he died in 2019 and no successor was found, it closed.
• Foundation Islamic Center Imam MalikThe mosque on the Nieuwe Marnixstraat, opened in 2012; before that the association was in a former taxi garage that had become too small. It is named after Malik ibn Anas, who also gives his name to the Maliki school of law, the principal one of Morocco. Founded by and for the Moroccan community — but the centre calls itself a meeting place for everyone.
• Heritage Leiden and Surroundings (Atlas Blaeu)Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken, on the Boisotkade, keeps a Blaeu atlas of 1658-1659: six volumes of engraved maps, among them 'Turcicum Imperium', the Ottoman Empire at its height. Too fragile to handle, and digitised page by page since 2007.
• Hortus Botanicus LeidenThe oldest botanical garden in the Netherlands, laid out in 1590, and the place where the country's first tulips flowered in 1593: Carolus Clusius brought the bulbs from Vienna, where they had arrived from Istanbul. In the spring of 2026 the Turkish hazel returns from Turkey.
• In den Vergulden Turk (At the Gilded Turk)The house that takes its name from its pediment: Neptune, an Easterner in a turban, and Mercury — trade with the Orient, by sea. The facade was built in 1672-1673 for the Le Pla family, textile merchants from Flanders; before that the house was called 'de Vergulde Druyff', the gilded grape.
• International Film Festival LeidenA film festival set up in 2006 by five people, lasting two days that first year; in 2025 it held its twentieth edition, eleven days long and showing well over a hundred films from around the world. Most screenings are at the Trianon and the Kijkhuis.
• Islamic Cemeteries in LeidenRhijnhof cemetery, bought in 1908 by the Reformed congregation to make a burial ground 'for people of every persuasion'. Since 2010 it has had an Islamic section and since 2023 a second; the graves face towards Mecca.
• Japan Museum SieboldHuisThe canal house where Philipp Franz von Siebold lived from 1832 to 1845 and showed his Japanese collection to the public — a museum already in the nineteenth century. He had gathered it all on Deshima, the Dutch trading post in the bay of Nagasaki. Since 2005 the building has been the Japan Museum SieboldHuis again.
• Leiden American Pilgrim MuseumThe museum showing that Leiden was no stopover for the Pilgrims but their home for nearly twelve years. They were English Separatists who had broken with the state church; in 1620 fewer than half of them left on the Mayflower. The American historian Jeremy Bangs founded the museum in 1997.
• Leiden City Hall - Crescent MoonsOn every little tower of the town hall facade sits a cast-iron crescent: the town hall carries an Islamic symbol, put there by a Protestant city at war with a Catholic empire. 'Liever Turcks dan Paaps' — rather Turkish than papist — was the slogan of the revolt: not a choice for Islam, but for the side where you were allowed to remain what you were.
• Leiden Courtyards (Hofjes)Leiden has thirty-four hofjes: clusters of small houses around a shared courtyard, founded by will by wealthy citizens for poor and elderly fellow townspeople — not for themselves. The oldest is the Jeruzalemhofje of 1467; on the Kloksteeg stands the Jean Pesijnhofje, on the spot where the Pilgrims had lived.
• Leiden University - Islamic StudiesThe building where the university library sat from 1595 to 1983 — the Oude UB — and where the Oriental collections arrived: Scaliger's bequest, Golius's manuscripts. In the same house the Islamic world is taught today: the books came first, the subject followed. Anyone taking Middle Eastern Studies here chooses a language: Arabic, Persian, Turkish or modern Hebrew.
• Leiden University (Academy Building)Here, on 8 February 1575, the first university of the northern Netherlands was founded: a gift from William of Orange to Leiden, in appreciation of its resistance to the Spanish. Before that the building was the chapel of the Dominican nuns, consecrated in 1516. In 2024-25 the university had 33,839 students, with more than 120 nationalities among them.
• Leiden University Library - Ottoman CollectionThe university's Oriental collection, still called the Legatum Warnerianum: Levinus Warner, resident in Constantinople, left a thousand manuscripts to Leiden in 1665. The collection now holds some 6,500 manuscripts, from North Africa to Central Asia. Since 1983 it has been here on the Witte Singel, under light domes borrowed from the greenhouses of the Hortus.
• Loge La VertuThe oldest masonic lodge in Leiden, founded in 1757. On 20 October 1864 Nishi Amane and Tsuda Mamichi were initiated here: the first Japanese freemasons there had ever been. Back in Japan they never spoke of it.
• Mabroek Butcher ShopA halal butcher on the Nieuwe Beestenmarkt since 1974 — eleven years before Leiden's first Turkish mosque: a community sets up its kitchen first. Beside the meat there are delicatessen, olives, bread and nuts, and for the Muslim community the shop is also a meeting place.
• Mansions along the canals (Slavery/Colonialism)The mansions along the canals stand on money earned overseas: there were no plantations in Leiden, only their yield arrived here. Leiden cloth served in West Africa as barter goods with which enslaved people were bought. In December 2025 the municipality apologised for the role the city government of the day had played.
• Mansions on the RapenburgLeiden's grandest canal: the families who governed the city lived here, along with professors and merchants — among them plantation owners who brought their African servants with them. At number 19 the house of Von Siebold, at 12 a plaque for two Japanese students of 1863.
• Market at the Nieuwe RijnIn the city's own words 'a tradition for more than 800 years': every Wednesday and Saturday the market stands along the water of the Nieuwe Rijn. Its parts are still named for what once lay there — Botermarkt, Vismarkt, Koornbrug — and on the signs above its seventy-odd stalls stands the city of today.
• Memorial Stone for ScaligerThe memorial stone at Breestraat 113, on the house where Joseph Justus Scaliger lived from 1594 to 1607. He never set foot in the Ottoman Empire but travelled east through books, and left his Oriental library to the university.
• MorspoortOne of the two city gates Leiden still has — of the eight it originally had. The stone gate was built in 1669 to a design by the city architect Willem van der Helm. It was more than a passage: gatekeepers levied excise here, visitors were registered, and cells sat in the octagonal dome.
• Municipal Museum De LakenhalThe museum has been in the Laecken-Halle of 1640 since 1874 — the hall where Leiden cloth was inspected and marked, so it stands exactly where the mark was struck. For seven centuries textiles defined the city; part of the raw material came from the Ottoman Empire — angora wool, silk, cotton.
• ObservatoryThe oldest university observatory in the world, going back to 1633: it began not with a building but with an instrument, at Jacobus Golius's request. The present domed building dates from 1860-61. De Sitter, Hertzsprung and Oort worked here, and from 1920 Einstein came for a month every year.
• Public Art and Street ArtSince 1992 more than 120 wall poems in dozens of languages have appeared on Leiden's facades — Russian, Arabic, Turkish, Chinese, Hebrew, Berber and more. The idea of the project: the wall reads in the script of whoever reads it. Beside them the city has a lively street-art scene of large murals.
• Raphelengius and Arabic PrintingThe house where Christophe Plantin set up his printing office in 1583 and where his son-in-law Franciscus Raphelengius took it over. Raphelengius was the first printer in Europe to set Arabic outside Rome; in 1595 he issued a specimen of his Arabic types. What served conversion in Rome served study here.
• SingelparkAt about 6.5 kilometres the longest city park in the Netherlands, laid along the singels that once enclosed Leiden: where the defence once lay, a park now runs. It came not from the council but from a citizens' initiative. The ring is not yet closed — seven footbridges are to do that.
• The House of Jacob GoliusRapenburg 12, named after Jacobus Golius (1596-1667), who brought back over three hundred Arabic, Turkish and Persian manuscripts from Aleppo and Constantinople. He also wrote the Arabic-Latin dictionary that remained the standard for two centuries. On the facade today hangs a plaque with two Japanese names.
• Thomas van Erpe (Erpenius)Leiden's first professor of Arabic, appointed in 1613. That same year he published the Grammatica Arabica, the first accurate Arabic grammar in Europe; he also knew Persian and Turkish, and his most enduring legacy is held to be the Turkish and Persian dictionaries he compiled. He died of the plague in 1624; his manuscripts went to Cambridge.
• Waag BuildingThe Waag of 1659, to a design by Pieter Post, on the spot where a wooden weigh house had stood since 1455. The city held the waagrecht: merchants were obliged to have their goods weighed here, so that Leiden could check quality and levy excise — weighing was not a service but a right. Above the gate a relief by Rombout Verhulst shows the weighing business itself.
• Walloon ChurchThe church of the Huguenots who fled to Leiden from France and Wallonia: in 1584 the congregation had 425 members, by 1643 five thousand. From 1638 it worshipped in this chapel of the old Sint-Catharinagasthuis. French-language services are still held here, accompanied by the organ of 1746.

Nothing here by that name.