Amsterdam travel guide

Top 10 sights in Amsterdam

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Marco Almbauer · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Rijksmuseum

   The national museum, in Cuypers's 1885 building, reopened in 2013 after a rebuild that ran a decade over schedule. The Night Watch hangs at the end of the long gallery — restored in public view, on camera — with Vermeer's Milkmaid and a floor of Delftware and ship models behind it.

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2. 

   2© Warrox · CC BY 2.5

   Van Gogh Museum

   Two hundred paintings and five hundred drawings, the largest collection of Van Gogh anywhere, held because his brother Theo's widow kept everything nobody would buy. Hung chronologically, it makes the ten-year career and its acceleration painfully clear.

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3. 

   3© HenkvD · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Defence Line of Amsterdam

   A ring of forty-two forts over a hundred and thirty-five kilometres round the city, built between 1880 and 1920 and designed to be defended by flooding the land between them. It was obsolete by the time it was finished; it became World Heritage in 1996.

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4. 

   4© John Lewis Marshall · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

   The municipal museum of modern art, founded in 1895 and extended in 2012 with a white composite structure that the city immediately named the bathtub. Its strengths are De Stijl, Cobra and post-war design.

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5. 

   5© Jose A. · CC BY 2.0

   Anne Frank House

   The annexe behind Otto Frank's business on the Prinsengracht, where eight people hid from July 1942 until they were betrayed in August 1944. Only Otto survived, and at his insistence the rooms are shown empty, as the Germans left them after clearing them out.

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6. 

   6© Rungbachduong · CC BY-SA 3.0

   De Wallen

   The oldest part of the city and its best-known red-light district, where prostitution is legal, taxed and worked from windows. The city has spent recent years trying to reduce the tourist crush, closing windows and moving the trade, with mixed success.

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7. 

   7© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Royal Palace of Amsterdam

   Built between 1648 and 1665 as the city hall of what was then the richest city in Europe, on nearly fourteen thousand timber piles. Louis Napoleon made it a palace in 1808; the Dutch monarch still uses it for state occasions and it is otherwise open.

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8. 

   8© Sietske · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Dam Square

   The square on the dam across the Amstel that gave the city its name. The Royal Palace and the Nieuwe Kerk stand on one side, the war memorial of 1956 on the other, and the whole space is where Amsterdam gathers when something happens.

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9. 

   9© Dejonkheer · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Natura Artis Magistra

   The oldest zoo in the Netherlands, founded in 1838, and one of the few laid out as a nineteenth-century garden and still using its original buildings — an aquarium of 1882, a monumental gate, a planetarium. It sits in the middle of the city, which is unusual and pleasant.

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10. 

    10© 14:43, 17 October 2006 · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Rembrandt House Museum

    The house Rembrandt bought in 1639 at the height of his success and lost in 1658 when he went bankrupt. The inventory taken by the bailiffs listed every object in every room, which is why the reconstruction is exact — including the studio, where etching is demonstrated daily.

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1. 

   1© Dguendel · CC BY 4.0

   Vondelpark

   Forty-seven hectares laid out in 1865 in the English manner by a private company of wealthy residents, and now used by something like ten million people a year. Free concerts run in the open-air theatre through the summer and the rose garden holds several hundred varieties.

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2. 

   2© Gerd Eichmann · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Oude Kerk

   The oldest building in Amsterdam, consecrated in 1306 and standing on the ground the city grew from. Rembrandt's wife Saskia is buried in it, its wooden vault is the largest medieval one in Europe, and the red-light district has grown right up to its walls.

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3. 

   3© Erik Zachte at Dutch Wikipedia Later versions were uploaded by Jcwf at nl.wikip · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Westerkerk

   A Protestant church of 1631 with the tallest tower in the city at eighty-five metres, topped by the imperial crown Maximilian granted Amsterdam. Rembrandt was buried in it as a pauper in 1669 and nobody recorded where.

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4. 

   4© W. Bulach · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Grote Kerk

   A Reformed church on the main square of Haarlem, built in 1307. Before the Reformation it was the Catholic cathedral; the seat of the present diocese of Haarlem-Amsterdam is a different church of the same dedication.

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   5© No machine-readable author provided. Jonik assumed (based on copyright claims). · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Jordaan

   A neighbourhood in the central district of Amsterdam, between the Singelgracht to the west and the Prinsengracht to the east, bounded by the Brouwersgracht to the north and the Leidsegracht to the south. Built for workers in the seventeenth century, it is now among the most expensive quarters in the city.

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6. 

   6© Massimo Catarinella · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Portuguese Synagogue

   An Orthodox synagogue on Mr Visserplein in central Amsterdam, completed in 1675 and known as the Esnoga or Snoge. It is lit only by candles, as it has been since it was built.

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   Homomonument

   Three pink granite triangles set into the quay behind the Westerkerk, unveiled in 1987 — the first monument anywhere to gay men and lesbians persecuted for their sexuality. One triangle points to the Anne Frank House, another to the war memorial on the Dam.

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   NEMO Science Center

   A science centre of 1997 in a green copper building by Renzo Piano, shaped like a ship's prow rising out of the harbour. Its stepped roof is a free public square with the best view of the water in the city, whether or not you go inside.

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9. 

   9© Marion Golsteijn · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Amsterdam Museum

   The city museum, in a complex that was Amsterdam's civic orphanage for four centuries. It has moved out of the Kalverstraat buildings for a long renovation and is showing a condensed version elsewhere in the city meanwhile.

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10. 

    10© Teylers Museum · CC BY-SA 3.0 nl

    Teylers Museum

    A museum founded at Haarlem in 1778 as a centre for the art and science of its day. Its core is the neoclassical oval room of 1784, behind the house of its founder Pieter Teyler van der Hulst; it is the oldest museum in the Netherlands.

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