The Stedelijk Museum or as the Dutch call it short Stedelijk (Municipal), strives to be one of the most innovative and interesting museums of modern art in the entire world.

After eight years of renovation and a construction of a new building next to the old one, the museum has reopened in September of 2012.

Moreover, while again, almost as at its first opening more than hundred years ago, the Stedelijk Museum drew controversies for its artistic choice, its policy and its financial decisions, the new museum is yet again interesting and fun to visit.

The Stedelijk´s main building was built in the years 1891-1895 at Paulus Potterstraat, at the short walking distance from the Rijksmuseum, to house the collection of art and antiques left to the city by Sophia Augusta Lopez Suasso de Bruyn. It was designed by A.W.Weissman, Amsterdam city architect at the time. It was a period when Dutch architecture was searching for its values in the historical past. Happily, the Stedelijk´s neo renaissance façade, decorated with several figurative sculptures, has been during the following renovations modernized and simplified, losing much of its rich decorum. People of Amsterdam like the old Weissman building, perhaps because of the contrast it creates with the modern art collection exhibited inside.