The Rijksmuseum ( Dutch for National Museum) is a national museum of the Netherlands, located in Amsterdam on the Museumplein. The Rijksmuseum is dedicated to arts, crafts and history. It has a large collection of paintings from the Dutch Golden Age and a substantial collection of Asian art.

The museum was founded in 1800 in The Hague to exhibit the collections of the Dutch stadtholders. It was inspired by the French example. By then it was known as the National Art Gallery (Dutch: Nationale Kunst-Gallerij). In 1808 the museum moved to Amsterdam on the orders of king Louis Napoleon, brother of Napoleon Bonaparte. The paintings owned by that city, such as The Night Watch (Dutch: De nachtwacht) by Rembrandt, became part of the collection.

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