(MENAFN- AFP) Dutch King Willem-Alexander on Friday officially reopens the renovated Mauritshuis museum, home to Vermeer's iconic 'Girl with the Pearl Earring" and a treasure trove of other Golden Age masterpieces.The elegant 17th-century mansion in The Hague has undergone a 30-million-euro ($40-million) revamp and more than doubled its floor space thanks to an art deco extension accessed through a light-filled underground atrium.The king will be welcomed by a real-life 'Girl with the Pearl Earring", who will hand him a key to officially declare the museum open to the public again after more than two years.Museum director Emilie Gordenker will give the king a guided tour of the Hague city centre museum, which will be broadcast live on giant television screens outside.Queen Maxima will not be attending, the palace said.Entry on Friday evening is free until midnight, with city centre shops offering a range of activities to mark the occasion.During the renovation, which began in 2012, many of the museum's best-known pieces, including "Girl with the Pearl Earring", have been touring the world, drawing millions from New York to Tokyo."'The Girl with the Pearl Earring' has become an icon, she's become the 'Mona Lisa' of the north, and she does belong here," Gordenker told AFP last week."There's something very special about the painting which maybe in a way is a bit like the Mauritshuis: we're small, we're intimate," she said of the museum that is also known as "the jewel box".A show at the Frick in New York drew record crowds to see the painting, which inspired a 2003 film starring Scarlett Johannson, but also Carel Fabritius' "The Goldfinch", the title of US author Donna Tartt's Pulitzer prize-winning 2013 novel.Given its new-found fame, "The Goldfinch" has been moved to another room in the renovated Mauritshuis.The museum's collection is small, around 800 paintings with just 250 on display, but of very high quality, including Rembrandt's "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp" and the Golden Age's best-known landscape, Vermeer's "View of Delft".The original building dates from the height of the Dutch Golden Age, which roughly spanned the 17th century, when the Dutch dominated much of world trade and, as a result, art.Whereas previously visitors went in through the service entrance, they now walk through the mansion's main gates and down a modern spiral staircase past the adjacent Dutch parliament and prime minister's office into the minimalist 21st-century atrium.The new wing, which houses a library and education centre, was acquired on long-term lease from neighbouring gentleman's club De Witte, one of The Hague's oldest social institutions.
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