Museum Kaap Skil, Texel

Museum Kaap Skil

Texel has long been a popular tourist destination and it's bound to become even more popular now that international tourist guides seem to promote it. In many aspects, Texel is indeed a special place but in others it's just like the rest of the Netherlands. The village of Oudeschild must have been an interesting place in its heyday in the seventeenth century but today it's not the most attractive of places. It's just like any modern Dutch village, with a tiny centrum comprising the usual shops for the locals and, if there's a chance of tourists coming along, a couple of shops for them to buy souvenirs.

The surprise in the centrum of Oudeschild is the striking yet simultaneously discrete facade of Museum Kaap Skil. A few hundreds of wood slats placed vertically in front of a curtain wall, cut in an irregular shape that reminds of a roofline manage to attract attention without imposing the building on its immediate environment. The inside is similarly pleasant and quite understated, with lots of light coming in filtered by the slats. Nothing much happens in the building itself, although it's worth a visit, especially with children. Just don't get into details on the exhibits: the system of ledgers and drawers they use in the museum doesn't work well.

The open-air part of the museum, comprising a few cottages, workplaces and an interesting collection of flotsam and jetsam is a nice touch and contrasts with the rather cramped and chaotic interior of the museum but in all, the building itself is probably one of the better designs by Mecanoo.