The Rijksmuseum, the Dutch national museum, reopened in 2013, after a decade-long renovation, and it is one of my favorite museums, not only because of the trove of Dutch Old Master works it houses, but also because it is a very manageable size for a museum, never overwhelming. Some of the museum’s highlights from the Ducth Golden Age include Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” and Vermeer’s “The Milkmaid.” One of my favorite paintings is “Still Life with Fruit and Flowers” by Balthasar van der Ast (1620-1621). The colors in the painting are so vivid, and yet I learned that this painting has lost much of its original luster, and that when it was new, it was even more colorful, which I can’t even imagine. Renovated by architecture firm Cruz y Ortiz, the outside of the museum retains the look of a fairytale castle, but the inside has been transformed in a way that is thoroughly suited to the modern age, while still retaining the museum’s history.