Shoppers Were Just Doing Their Errands When a 370-Year-Old Painting Came to Life Right in Front of Them

It was an ordinary day at a shopping centre in Breda, in the south of the Netherlands.

People were carrying shopping bags. Parents were pushing strollers.

Then a scruffy boy in old-fashioned clothes came running past the shop windows, clutching something under his arm. Right behind him, a man in a wide black hat came sliding down a rope from the floor above.

And then they came from everywhere. Along the balconies, through the crowd, even on horseback in the street outside. Men with long moustaches and pointed beards. Wide-brimmed hats with feathers. Shining helmets. Muskets, pikes, swords and a drum.

Shoppers stopped. Some laughed. Some grabbed their phones. Children stared with their mouths open.

More than 30 men in 17th-century costume marched together into the centre of the mall. There, they took their places inside a giant picture frame.

And then they froze.

Suddenly everyone understood what they were looking at. It was The Night Watch, Rembrandt’s most famous painting, from 1642. The captain in black with the red sash. His lieutenant in gold beside him. The drummer. The flag. Every man exactly where Rembrandt had painted him, more than 370 years ago.

They had stepped out of the painting and into a shopping centre.

The stunt had a reason. In April 2013, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, home of The Night Watch, was about to reopen after a renovation that had kept large parts of it closed for 10 years. The Dutch bank ING, the museum’s main sponsor, wanted the whole country to know that the old masters were back. Its message to shoppers, printed on banners beside the frame, was simple: “Our heroes are back!” On April 13, 2013, the museum would open its doors for free, from noon to midnight.

The real painting cannot leave the museum. So the museum’s heroes came to the people instead.

The video of that afternoon spread far beyond the Netherlands. It was watched millions of times all over the world, by people who had never been to Amsterdam and might never stand in front of the real thing.

Many said the same: they had never looked at an old painting the same way again.

Would you have stopped your shopping to watch this? Tell us in the comments.