UvA was founded as Athenaeum Illustre during the Dutch Golden Age in 1632. Its aim was to train students in trade and philosophy. Today it has grown into a large university with a wide range of English programmes, and an international reputation for its research. Since 1901, four professors from UvA have been awarded the Nobel Prize. UvA is a city university occupying numerous historical buildings, most of which are located in the centre of Amsterdam.

The University Museum, presenting the history of the university, is housed in the Agnietenkapel (Chapel of Holy Agnes). The Portrait Gallery, consisting of paintings, reliefs and sculptures, resides in the main building and faculty buildings of the university. There is no permanent exhibition in the University Museum. Specialised museums also exist in the fields of anatomy, archaeology, zoology and computer science. Some faculties house historical collections, such as the Faculty of Humanities, which features collections in Dutch archaeology, phonetics, art and ethnomusicology. The collections of the Faculty of Science reflect the golden era of sciences at the end of the 19th Century, when three winners of the Nobel prize, Pieter Zeeman, Jacobus Henricus van’t Hoff and Johan Diderik van der Waals, and the famous botanist Hugo de Vries worked at UvA.

The special collections of the UvA library contain a wide range of historical research collections which focus on the history of Dutch book design and book printing, maps, Dutch literature, education, and history of medicine, as well as Hebrew and Jewish history. Five times per year, temporary exhibitions are devoted to various departmental topics. The Academic Medical Centre (AMC) has a collection of 5,000 objects of Dutch Contemporary Art, which began from the initiative of professor Brummelkamp in 1984. The university has a long-standing tradition of research, especially in science. Other fields of study include information law, cultural anthropology, economics, logic, linguistics, psychology and pedagogical sciences. UvA’s research staff produces over 7,500 academic publications annually.

UvA also stimulates development of research by collaboration with academic disciplines and exploration of scientific inquiry. The university has approximately 1,360 PhD students, and confers over 310 doctoral degrees annually. Each year, approximately 200 PhD degrees are granted in the fields of scientific and medical research, and some 100 in the humanities and social sciences.