As Secretary of the Leiden University Fund, I have the privilege of moving through the university’s many spaces. My first steps “within its walls” were taken as a child. Several times a year, I would accompany my father (an Art History lecturer) to the Print Room at Rapenburg 65. I loved it there — the grand marble hallway, the maze of cabinets filled with prints, and most of all, the garden. In autumn, we were allowed to gather as many chestnuts as we wanted.
Later, my father’s office moved to the Johan Huizinga Building on Doelensteeg, overlooking the Print Room garden. When I visited him as a Leiden student, we often reminisced about those chestnut-gathering days and how much fun they were.
Rapenburg 65 is no longer a university building, and my father passed away a few years ago. Yet the chestnut tree, just 200 meters from my office at the Alumni House, keeps these cherished memories alive.
