The museum covers 800 years of Dutch history through 8,000 objects, distributed through 80 rooms. A one mile (1.5-kilometre) walk around the galleries will take you "from the Middle Ages to Mondrian," the Dutch painter and one of the pioneers of the De Stijl movement in the first half of the 20th century.

But at the heart of the museum's physical and artistic identity is Rembrandt's vast masterpiece of militia intimidation, The Night Watch. The painting, flanked by works by the likes of Johannes Vermeer and Frans Hals, symbolises the Golden Age, roughly spanning the 17th century, when the Dutch dominated much of world trade and, as a result, art.