Rembrandt House
The Rembrandt House is the house on the Jodenbreestraat where Rembrandt van Rijn lived and worked from 1639 to 1658. It was built in 1606 and has been a museum since 1911.
Rembrandt bought this house at the height of his fame, for a price he could not afford. It made him, and then it ruined him.
In 1639 Rembrandt was thirty-two and the most sought-after painter in Amsterdam. He had married well, and he wanted an address to match. This house cost 13,000 guilders, a huge sum, and he agreed to pay it off in instalments.
He lived here for almost twenty years. The big studio was upstairs at the front, where the north light comes in. His pupils worked in the attic. In a room downstairs he kept the collection that helped sink him: shells, weapons, Roman busts, stuffed animals, prints by the hundreds. And in this house, in 1642, he finished The Night Watch. His wife Saskia died here the same year.
He never finished paying. Commissions slowed, he kept buying, and the instalments went unpaid. In 1656 he was declared insolvent. Clerks went through the house room by room and listed everything in it for auction, and two years later the house itself was sold. Rembrandt moved to a rented place on the Rozengracht and died there in 1669.
That bankruptcy inventory survives. When the house was restored in the 1990s, it was the document used to put each room back the way he had it.
What to look for
The top storey
The pediment and upper floor were added about 1627, before Rembrandt bought the house. They made it one of the grander fronts on the street.
The street
Jodenbreestraat means Jewish Broad Street. Rembrandt’s neighbours were Sephardic merchants and scholars, and he drew and painted many of them.
The studio windows
The tall first-floor windows light the room where he painted. North light is steady all day, which is why painters wanted it.
Key facts
- Built
- 1606, remodelled about 1627
- Rembrandt lived here
- 1639–1658
- Bought for
- 13,000 guilders
- Museum since
- 1911
- Address
- Jodenbreestraat 4, Amsterdam Directions
Close by
The bigger picture
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The dates, names and figures on this page were checked against published references. These are the records for this place. The story is Lookstory’s own telling of them. Last updated October 2026.