Once home to one of Rembrandt's most successful students, Ferdinand Bol, this twin house, built in 1672 by Adriaan Dortsman, fell into the hands of the Van Loon family in 1886, who lived here until 1960. After extensive restoration of the house and facade, designed in a sober classicizing mode, the museum opened to depict opulent canal-side living. Along with wonderful period rooms, the house is filled with 80 portraits of the Van Loon family, which follow their history back to the 17th century when one of them helped found the East Indies Company; subjects include paired marriage portraits, and painters include Dirk Santvoort and Cornelis van der Voort. Up the copper staircase -- picked out with the initials of Abraham van Hagen and his wife, Catharine Trip, who presided over the house in the 1750s -- you'll find various salons containing trompe l'oeil paintings known as witjes, illusionistic depictions of landscapes and other scenes. Don't miss the real landscape out back: an exquisitely elegant garden of trimmed hedgerows, which forms a lovely setting for the Van Loon coach houses (the family was rich enough to elegantly house even its carriages), which magisterially adopt the look of Grecian temples. COST: EUR4.50.