Prison Gate Museum

The Prison Gate Museum features a heavy, dark stone archway spanning the street, built into the oldest remaining fortification of The Hague. During the thirteenth century, this structure served as the entrance to the castle of the Counts of Holland, but it later became the most feared prison in the country. In sixteen seventy-two, a mob dragged the Dutch statesman Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis from these cells, killing them in the street outside before tearing their bodies apart on the spot.