The Wereldmuseum Amsterdam, long known as the Tropenmuseum, stands on Linnaeusstraat in East Amsterdam. Johannes Jacobus and Marie Adrianus van Nieukerken designed it, and it officially opened in 1926 after 11 years of construction, delayed by World War I and labor strikes. It is richly decorated for its time, and all its artwork dates from the first half of the 20th century.
The institution began in Haarlem, was founded in 1864 and opened to the public in 1871. It was formerly the Colonial Museum. After Indonesian independence in 1945, its scope widened to former colonial states in South America, Africa and Asia. A children's wing, now Tropenmuseum Junior, was added in the early 1970s.
The building became a listed monument in 2003. The collection holds 340,000 objects and photographs, and the museum had 317,572 visitors in 2022.
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