Maritime Museum, Groningen

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On the Brugstraat (Bridge Street), one of the major bicycle routes into and out of the center of Groningen, there are two beautifully restored medieval buildings that house the Northern Maritime Museum – “Northern” because Groningen is at the northern end of the Netherlands.

The museum deals with the history of shipbuilding and shipping from the 6th century through the Middle Ages and up to the present. There are numerous attractive displays of model ships, maps, pictures, navigation instruments and ceramics, as well as a film showing what Groningen was like (minus the people) in the year 1470.

Second photo: Old globes, books, charts and instruments in one of the many display cases.

Third photo: A display of ropes with different kinds of splices. This was something of a blast from the past for me because I learned to make some of these splices when I was a boy scout, but had completely forgotten about them in the meantime.

Fourth photo: A course correcting instrument for use on shipboard. This particular instrument was imported from England, where it was patented.

Fifth photo: A collection of sextants, ingenious instruments which were used in navigation to determine the position of the ship. (I’m told most ships today still carry sextants as a back-up navigation instrument, in case their GPS system conks out for some reason.)

Next: University Museum

This museum is housed in several former warehouse, one of it is from Middle Ages. It is fun to follow the route set out and see what maritime history the province of Groningen has.
As they say themselves it s a walk through five ages of Groninger maritime history.
Also they show the history of tobacco, from thousands of years old indian culture up to now.

Behind this Gothic facade from the 15th century is a building that is about a century older. It has had many different functions, including that of a brewery and a warehouse. It's now a museum.