The tolerant Dutch not only made sex for money legal, not only created an entire district where everyone craving it can buy a little love for sale, they also seriously took up educational work in this area! As many as two museums in Amsterdam are devoted to the history of everything connected with the basic instinct: the Erotic Museum and the Sex Museum. Do not confuse them, these are two completely different collections, and now we want to tell you about the second one.
The Sex Museum or, as the sign says, "Temple of Venus," is located near Central Station and hides behind the modest facade of a 17th-century building.
Several of its halls are connected by a special staircase that creates the impression of a labyrinth of corridors and rooms. When the museum premises were being remodeled, very symbolic finds were discovered in the walls of the building: a porcelain tile depicting a man with an erection playing cards, and a bronze statuette of the god Hermes with an enormous penis, which is at least several centuries old. The founders of the museum considered these finds a sign that the theme of the collection had been chosen correctly. As it turned out, they were not mistaken - the Sex Museum is visited by at least half a million tourists every year.
Although in 1985 the museum began with only a few dozen 19th-century items, the flow of visitors kept growing, and along with it the collection of exhibits. Now you can explore four centuries of the history of humanity's most natural and pleasant activity: various statuettes and figurines in sexual poses, erotic pictures and photographs, toys and sex machines from different eras, textbooks and guides thanks to which intimacy turned from a physical act into an art and the purest pleasure.
