The Panorama Mesdag
The Hague is very important for the Dutch. But for the outsider it is dull and a bit bleak and not a patch on Amsterdam where you can hardly turn without seeing canals and architecture of extreme beauty.
But The Hague offers some great surprises. Vermeers and Rembrants are to be enjoyed, a Chinese restaurant, called Fat Kee, and also a number 1 tram to take you in one direction to Delft and the other to the pier and seaside at Scheveningen. But, to me, there is something very special to see - something magical.
On a road towards the Scheveningen direction (at Zeestraat 65) is an underplayed entrance to a museum of unexceptional paintings, leading to a staircase to climb. And at the top of that staircase you suddenly find yourself standing on a sand dune in about the year of 1880.
You are now in the midde of a late 19th century landscape with the sea on one side and the other overlooking the small fishing town of Scheveningen. This is the Panorma Mesdag, painted on the inside of a circular canvas contrived and executed by the artistic family Mesdag.
The boats, animals and figures do not actually move, but you are there - absolutely there.
Boats are on the sand being unloaded of their fish and other goods. Horses and carts are there to transport these goods inland. Boats are under repair, sails are attended to and flap in the breeze. A regiment on horseback have appeared to exercise along the shoreline, children play, a minor seaside palace awaits the arrival of its royal owner, people scurry along narrow streets. You can smell the tar and the fish, hear the waves and bask in the light winds.
Few panoramas remain in these days of easy transport, but in their day you could visit the seaside from well inland.
And for me, to be there is the best experience to be had in the Netherlands.
