Ruine Square is an open space in Leiden whose quiet appearance overlays a violent history: in 1807, a barge carrying gunpowder exploded nearby, destroying about three hundred houses and killing many people. In the boys’ account of the square, its present-day openness becomes a reminder of the built landscape that disaster erased.

Setting and Earlier Layout

Lambert points out the square as a place that is pretty in summer, when shaded by trees. The name Ruine recalls a different landscape: years earlier, houses covered the site, and the Rapenburg Canal ran through the street. What appears as an open public space was therefore made by destruction, not simply left vacant.

The 1807 Explosion

The disaster began when a barge carrying forty thousand pounds of gunpowder, bound for Delft, lay alongside the area. The bargemen decided to cook dinner aboard; the explosion followed before anyone could respond. Lambert dates it to 1807, though he qualifies the date, and says it happened at noon. The blast destroyed roughly three hundred houses and killed many people.

Lambert recounts the catastrophe through his father, who was in Leiden at the time and remembered buildings collapsing, the town catching fire, and people trapped beneath the ruins. He compares the explosion to a volcano. The account turns the square from a sightseeing stop into a place where ordinary domestic activity—a meal prepared on a barge—stands beside sudden, city-wide devastation.

Rescue and Memorial

According to Lambert’s account, the king came to Leiden and remained in the streets through the night, encouraging survivors as they fought the fire and tried to rescue people from the rubble. A collection for the sufferers was raised throughout the kingdom, and the treasury contributed one hundred thousand guilders. The disaster thus drew both immediate rescue efforts and broader public relief.

Professor Luzac was among those killed. A tablet to his memory stands in Saint Peter’s Church farther along the route; Lambert describes its carved image as representing the professor as he looked when found after the explosion. The memorial carries the catastrophe beyond the cleared square, linking the vanished houses to an individual death and a continuing act of remembrance.

Significance in the Narrative

The square’s contrast between summer shade and the former crowded street gives the boys’ excursion a sudden historical depth. Its openness marks both the loss of the houses and the city’s recovery of usable public space. Lambert’s story makes local geography legible as a record of danger, communal response, and remembrance: the canal-side city that appears orderly has been shaped by forces capable of undoing it in an instant.