Museum Tot Zover – Amsterdam, Netherlands - Atlas Obscura

Museum Tot Zover

This museum inside Amsterdam's largest cemetery explores how people deal with death. 

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According to its website, Museum Tot Zover is “dying” to answer the question of how people deal with death. It’s housed in a 19th-century former foreman’s home in De Nieuwe Ooster, Amsterdam’s largest cemetery.

The museum explores the multicultural nature of funeral practices in the country, as well as the funeral traditions of various religions. Rather than the usual death museum fare of true crime or medical specimens, Tot Zover focuses on the culture and conversation around death and the funeral industry.

Its collections include books of post-mortem photography, early-20th-century hearses, Victorian hair keepsakes, and handmade urns for pets. Past exhibitions have examined Italian coffin marketing—calendars with scantily clad women posing both on and in the merchandise—and the use of smartphones as records of the device’s owner’s death in the Middle East.

The museum also hosts regular Dutch-language “mourning cafes” for locals, with guest speakers giving lectures and guiding discussions.

Know Before You Go

The museum is easily accessed by metro from the city center to Amstelstation. Most exhibition texts are in both English and Dutch.

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August 29, 2019

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