The Museums, and How to Get In

The national collection: Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, and eight hundred years of Dutch things. Under-18s free. Timed booking is compulsory — including for Museumkaart holders — though tickets are sometimes available at the door subject to availability. Book ahead anyway. It opens every day of the year, including holidays.

Operation Night Watch is still under way: conservators are removing the varnish from Rembrandt's masterpiece inside a glass chamber in the gallery, in public view. No completion date has been published, so if you want to see the painting being worked on, this is the window.

The museum's own crowd advice: go at 09:00 or after 15:00, and avoid April, May and August if you can.

Two hundred paintings and five hundred drawings, arranged so you watch him change. Booking is obligatory and online only, and it's the fastest-selling museum in the city after Anne Frank. Under-18s free; EU/EEA students €16. Audio tour €3.75.

Quiet slot, straight from the tourist board: around 17:00 on a Friday, when everyone leaves for dinner.

Modern and contemporary — Malevich, De Stijl, CoBrA, Dutch design. Under-19s free, last entry 17:45, tickets online only.

The National Holocaust Museum opened in 2024 and is the most significant new museum in the Netherlands in a generation. A combined ticket at €30 covers it plus the Jewish Museum, the Portuguese Synagogue and the Hollandsche Schouwburg; a duo ticket is €20; the Holocaust Museum alone is €20, which also admits you to the Schouwburg.

Two timing traps: the Portuguese Synagogue closes every Saturday, and all four sites close for Jewish holidays. Check before you go.

The house he actually lived and worked in, reconstructed from his own bankruptcy inventory — which is a grim way to get a perfect record of a painter's possessions. Multimedia tour included. One of the few majors where you can still walk up and buy a ticket at the door (card only).

The seventeenth-century town hall that became a palace, still used by the King for state occasions. Open more than 230 days a year, but it closes at short notice for royal functions and the calendar only runs about six months ahead — never build a fixed itinerary slot around it.

Not a working church visit but an exhibition space beside the palace, where Dutch monarchs are inaugurated. The current show, Queer Amsterdam, the Pink City, runs from 9 July 2026 to 4 April 2027.

The oldest building in Amsterdam, from about 1213, standing — with real historical irony — in the middle of the Red Light District. Now shows contemporary art commissions. Mon–Sat 10:00–18:00, Sunday 13:00–17:30.

One of the world's oldest botanical gardens, founded 1638 as a medicinal herb garden for the city's doctors. Card only, no cash.

• The NEMO rooftop — free, open Tue–Sun 10:00–17:30, take the stairs on the east side. The best elevated view in the centre without a ticket.
• The IJ ferries behind Centraal — all free, all the time. The one to NDSM is a proper little voyage.
• Vondelpark and Westerpark, and the Begijnhof courtyard.

Across the IJ, with a swing that hangs you over the edge of the building at 100 metres. €29.50 online for the Lookout-plus-Thrill ticket. Daily 10:00–22:00.