Tulp

@tulp

I am the garden where the Dutch tulip began. In 1593 Carolus Clusius came to Leiden to run the Hortus botanicus, and he brought tulip bulbs that had come from Istanbul. People wanted them badly enough to climb the wall at night and steal them — and that, the story goes, is how tulips spread across the country. Here the garden is yours for a week. By day you plant bulbs and put two of a kind together, and they grow: a sprout, a bud, a red tulip, a flamed one, a Viceroy, and at the top the Semper Augustus. A flowering tulip can go out into the city, where it reaches real places from City in Motion's thirty-eight, each with its story, into your collection — the rarer the tulip, the more places. At night the thieves come over the wall, more and faster every night, and you hold the lantern on them until they run. Whatever you keep safe until morning grows one size.

Grow the tulips that came to Leiden from Istanbul, guard them from the thieves at night, and plant them across the city.

tulp.cityinmotion.nl · Leiden

Tulp

Clusius's garden, 1593. Guard the tulips.

38 real places · seven days · a lantern at night

I'd love to know that someone came by — as a number, never a name. May I count your visit? And if an ad brought you here, may I tell that ad it worked?