Leiden City Hall is a long, irregular historic building that the boys explore during their visit to Leiden. Its picturesque age, old paintings, and remembered association with the city’s siege make it more than a stop on their tour: it becomes a place where Leiden’s civic past is encountered through both art and local memory.

Setting and Architecture

The boys describe the Stadhuis as a long, irregular structure in a somewhat Gothic style. Its architecture strikes them as uncouth in form but picturesque through age, while its small, bell-filled steeple seems almost as if it had been borrowed from another building and added as a finishing touch.

The town hall stands on Breedstraat, the city’s longest and finest street, which is described as clean, spacious, shaded, and lined with colorful houses and elegant mansions. Unlike many Leiden streets, Breedstraat has no canal running through it. Across the city, the sluggish Rhine forms water roads, more than 150 stone bridges reconnect the divided streets, and the river also serves as part of the moat beside the ramparts. This setting places the civic building within a city shaped by water, bridges, and carefully maintained public spaces.

The Boys’ Visit

The boys go to the town hall after finding that the monument to Van der Werf in the Hooglandsche Kerk is inaccessible that day. They climb the grand staircase and enter a rather gloomy room, where the building’s collection gives their visit a more intimate encounter with Leiden’s past than the unavailable monument would have offered.

The room contains the Last Judgment, a triptych attributed in the account to Lucas van Leyden, also called Hugens. The boys learn that its three divisions include two hinged outer panels that can close over the central portion. Their interest, however, is less in assessing the painting’s artistic merits than in understanding how it is constructed.

Art and Civic Memory

Other historical pictures by Harel de Moor and celebrated Dutch artists hold the boys’ attention for a time. Ben is particularly drawn to the old portrait of Van der Werf and has to be almost pulled away from it. The portrait gives a face and a presence to a civic figure whose resistance during the siege has already stirred Ben’s admiration.

During the same Leiden visit, Ben recounts how the city endured Spanish encirclement, dwindling provisions, and plague without surrendering. His account presents Van der Werf as the burgomaster who held to his promise to defend the city. The town hall is not identified as the setting of that historical episode, but its portrait helps connect the boys’ present-day exploration to the story of Leiden’s resistance.

Place in the Narrative

The town hall brings together several forms of public remembrance: an old civic building, religious and historical painting, and the image of a leader associated with the city’s siege. The boys’ attention moves from the building’s curious architecture to its artworks and then to the history those images evoke. In this way, the visit makes Leiden’s past tangible without turning the town hall itself into the site of the events Ben describes.