Wednesday – The Hague and Escher

On Wednesday we took a train to The Hague to go see the Escher museum.  It’s in an old royal palace, so the rooms are fun, and the chandeliers are fantastic.  Downstairs they have Escher’s older work, which is the same drawing style, but mostly landscapes, and none of the fun tricks with perspective or illusions.

The second floor has what you might call classic Escher: the metamorphoses and impossible buildings, and hands drawing each other.  All of which is copyright, obviously.

But our favourite bit was the top floor with all the interactive stuff. The cube is painted on the walls – some around the doorway, some in the room behind.

They’ve also got a hemispherical mirror, and we had fun photographing each other from different angles.

Best of all was the room-within-a-room with trick perspective.  The left hand side is actually smaller and closer to the camera. You have to pay extra for a photo, and I usually regret paying for that sort of extra, but we all love this.

Posted by sheila

Sheila came to La Palma with a six month contract and has stayed 24 years so far. She used to work as a software engineer at the observatory, but now she's a writer and Starlight guide.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.