Walking in the footsteps of van Leeuwenhoek (part 2): My van Leeuwenhoek walk
"But what if one should tell such people in the future that there are more animals living in the scum on
the teeth in a man's mouth than there are men in the whole kingdom?"
Anthony van Leeuwenhoek, 17 September 1683
letter 39 to the Royal Society
as quoted by K. Todd, 2007, Chrysalis.
If you would like to see the van Leeuwenhoek sights of Delft, you can easily follow this path in 2-3 hours,
spending only a few euros on the way. Try to start early, at 10 AM or so, to avoid the Vermeer crowds,
and remember that there will be services in the churches on Sundays. The suggested route is in
chronological order, resulting in a reasonably coherent path. I have not provided a map here, but you
can download this kml file and open it in Google Earth or other mapping program on your mobile. If you
want to visit the Botanical Garden, not directly relevant to our protagonist, it would make sense to do
this first. There you can see an attractive sculpture of dividing yeast cells, perhaps honouring one of the
other famous microbiological institutions of this city, the biotech monolith Gist Brocades.
 From the front of the train station, you can see the steeples of the two famous churches in the old
town. Walk past the bicycle stands, cross the canal and Westvest road, and enter the old town on the
narrow Barbarasteeg. Cross the Oude Delft canal, continue in the same direction and walk down
Breestraat, then slant slightly right and walk down Gasthuislaan towards the Oostport gate.
1. Van Leeuwenhoek's birthplace (beside R.K. Jenasplanschool de Oostpoort, Oosteinde 6). Near the
pretty Oostpoort (East Gate) of the town is this girls' school. Van Leeuwenhoek was born on 24 October
1632 in a house that stood in what is now the playground of the school, beside the mural in the picture.
A photo of the house can be seen in Dobell (1958); the building was torn down sometime after 1926.
The notion that he was born in a house next to a contemporary girls' school caused some civic confusion
when it came to erecting the plaque at site 6.
 Walk along the street Oosteinde towards the steeple of the Nieuwe Kerk.
2. Nieuwe Kerk (the New Church, Markt). The entrance fee, in April 2013, was euro € 3.20, and also
allows entrance to the Oudekerk (site 5). Van Leeuwenhoek was baptized here on 4 November 1632.
There is a baptismal font in the centre of the church; one would have to engage in some serious archival
research to determine if this was representative of what was there 380 years ago. He was also married
in this church to his first wife Barbara de Meij on 29 July 1654; she died on 11 July 1666 and was buried
in the Oudekerk (site 5). The widowed van Leeuwenhoek remarried, but the venue for the second
marriage was not mentioned by Dobell.
 Walk across the town square to the Town Hall.
3. Stedhuis (Town Hall, Markt). On 26 March 1660, van Leeuwenhoek was appointed Chamberlain of the
Council-Chamber of the Worshipful Sheriffs of Delft. Facing the building with the church at your back, his
office was on the right hand side of the building on the second floor.
 Walk around the right hand side of the Town Hall and cross the canal to the corner of Nieuwestraat
and Hipppolytusbuurt, and walk down to the plaque on the wall of the clothing store.
4. Het Gouden Hoofd (The Golden Head, Hipppolytusbuurt 1; see images in Part 1). The house where
van Leewenhoek lived most of his life, where he made all of his earth shaking discoveries, and in which
he died, no longer exists and there are no extant photographs. The site is now occupied by the Charles
Vogele Switzerland clothing store. The house was apparently the second from the corner on
Hippolytusbuurt from Nieuwstraat. Some of the famous water samples came from the canal in front of
the building, others from water flowing across the tiles of the roof. Peter the Great, and many other
notables, visited here. A brass plaque commemorating the location of the now cryptic historical site
adorns the outside wall in the approximate place of the previous building. Translated to English, it reads,
"Here stood the house The Golden Head, where 91 year old Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, the discoverer of
microbes, died on 26 August 1723."
 Continue along Hipppolytusbuurt and turn left on Heilige Geestkerkhof to get to the Oude Kerk.
5. Oude Kerk (Old Church, Heilige Geestkerkhof 25). Enter the church in the inconspicuous side door by
the statue of the saint Geertruyt van Oosten, through the gift shop. Show your ticket from the Neiuwe
Kerk to the cashier. Van Leeuwenhoek was buried in the Oude Kerk five days after his death. His
monument, erected by his daughter in 1739, is in the back of the church and is illustrated in the first
part of this blog post. After you enter the church, turn left, then left again in the final aisle. His actual
grave is beneath the two engraved stones in the floor in front of the crypt.
 Return along the canal Oude Delft, on the side nearest the Market, past the Niewestraat, until you
get to Boterbrug.
6. The Wrong Plaque (corner of Boterbrug and Oude Delft). Dobell pokes some fun at the municipal
officials who erected this tribute to van Leeuwenhoek in the wrong place. The evidence suggested that
his birth house was beside a girls' school (see site 1), but they chose the wrong school. You can see that
the text of the dedication was changed, with the last word altered to 'stede' (in this city), presumably
from 'plaats' (in this place). Note: On the other side of the canal is a brightly decorated building, the
headquarters of the Dutch East Indies Company, a major international corporation of the imperial Dutch
Golden Age.
There are apparently other van Leeuwenhoek mementoes to search out in Delft, in the depths of
museums, such as the medal awarded to van Leeuwenhoek by the University of Louvain in 1716 (see the
epigraph of Part 1 of this essay), but to see these you will have to do more digging than I could manage.
For microscopes, you have to visit the Boerhaave Museum in Leiden. I will try to do that next year, to
complete the Dutch leg of my van Leeuwenhoek odyssey.