Amsterdam Tulip Museum

This guide to the Amsterdam Tulip Museum traces the tulip mania of the 1630s through Adrian Pauw, who owned twelve of the rarest 'broken' tulips and refused to sell a single one, driving the rest of the city to obsession. You'll hear how gardeners tried everything to reproduce the pattern, how a single Semper Augustus bulb was valued at ten thousand guilders by January 1637, and what happened at a Haarlem auction weeks later when buyers stopped showing up. The portraits hanging around you are the closest you'll get to seeing one.