AMSTERDAM · NETHERLANDS
The canals, the masters, and the city in between.
Glide the 17th-century canal ring, stand in front of Rembrandt and Van Gogh, follow the Anne Frank story through the old centre, then ride out to the windmills and the tulip fields.
Only in Amsterdam
Three things that are Amsterdam, and nowhere else.
Boat rides, art museums and old towns turn up all over Europe. A canal ring this complete, the world’s Van Gogh under one roof, and the house where Anne Frank actually wrote do not.
A UNESCO masterpiece
The Canal Ring
Amsterdam’s canal ring is a UNESCO World Heritage site: concentric horseshoes of water dug in the Golden Age, lined with narrow gabled merchant houses and crossed by some 1,500 bridges. No other city was planned quite like it, and the only way to read it properly is from the deck of a boat.
- 1 Amsterdam Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Drinks and Cheese
- 2 Amsterdam Luxury Canal Cruise + Unlimited Drinks & Bites option
- 3 Amsterdam: Classic Boat Cruise with Optional Cheese & Wine
200 paintings, one life
The World’s Van Gogh
The Van Gogh Museum holds more of the artist than anywhere on Earth: over 200 paintings, hundreds of drawings and the letters, hung in the order he lived them. The Sunflowers, Almond Blossom, the self-portraits and the final wheatfields, a whole life’s work under one roof.
- 1 Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum Ticket and City Canal Cruise
- 2 Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum Ticket & Canal Cruise
- 3 Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam Exclusive Tour w/ Reserved Entry
The diary, the house
Anne Frank’s Amsterdam
Behind a hinged bookcase on the Prinsengracht, Anne Frank and her family hid for two years while she wrote the most-read diary of the war. The annex still stands, empty and unfurnished, and the old Jewish Quarter around it carries the rest of the story.
- 1 Anne Frank’s Story – Guided Walking Tour through Amsterdam
- 2 Amsterdam: Life of Anne Frank and World War II Walking Tour
- 3 Amsterdam: Anne Frank Guided Small Group Walking Tour
The one everyone books
Amsterdam’s most-booked experience.
More travellers book this than anything else on the site. If you only lock in one thing before you go, make it this.
The classics
Amsterdam’s Most Popular Tours & Tickets
Canal cruises, the Van Gogh and the Rijksmuseum, the Anne Frank story and the windmill day trips. The experiences most people book first.
Where to begin
The days an Amsterdam trip is built around.
Canal cruises, the great museums, the Anne Frank story, the cheese rooms and the windmill villages. The categories most Amsterdam trips are planned around, and the best of each.
The big question
How to see the art.
Amsterdam has more world-class art than any trip has afternoons, so the real question is where to begin. Here is how the big three compare, and who each one is for.
On the water
Ninety minutes through the Golden Age.
The classic Amsterdam hour: a low open boat threading the four great canals, Herengracht, Keizersgracht, Prinsengracht and the Singel, ducking under stone bridges past leaning merchant houses, the Anne Frank House and the Skinny Bridge. Go by day for the gables, or after dark when the bridges light up and, in winter, the light-festival installations glow over the water.
Read the guide: Amsterdam canal cruises →Beyond the ring
Windmills, clogs and the old Zuiderzee.
Half an hour from Centraal the city gives way to flat green polder. At Zaanse Schans a row of working windmills still saws timber and grinds pigment beside the river, with cheese and clog makers at work in the wooden houses. Carry on to Volendam and Marken, the old fishing villages on the Zuiderzee, for harbours, gabled streets and smoked eel.
See the windmill day trips →The Museum Quarter
More masterpieces per square mile than anywhere.
Around one grassy square, the Museumplein, stand the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk and the Moco, with the Concertgebouw across the road. Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh and Mondrian within a few minutes’ walk, then a coffee on the lawn under the I amsterdam letters. Book the big two ahead and you can see the lot in a day.
Browse the museums →Tulip season
Seven million bulbs, eight weeks a year.
For eight weeks from mid-March, the Keukenhof gardens south of the city plant seven million tulips, daffodils and hyacinths into ribboned beds and flower mosaics, while the bulb fields around Lisse turn to stripes of red and yellow you can see from the train. The gates shut by mid-May, so spring trips book out early.
- 1 Amsterdam: Keukenhof Ticket and Roundtrip Shuttle Transfer
- 2 Amsterdam: Tour to Keukenhof Gardens with Windmill Cruise
- 3 From Amsterdam: Keukenhof Gardens Ticket and Transfer
After dark
The city looks better from the water at night.
Once the sun drops, the canal houses light up and the bridges trace gold lines across the water. Evening cruises run with wine and cheese or an open bar, and from late November the Amsterdam Light Festival strings glowing art installations along the route, best seen from a heated boat with a drink in hand.
See all 15 evening cruises →Beyond the city
Five day trips from Centraal.
Windmills and fishing villages at Zaanse Schans and Volendam. The tulip fields at Keukenhof. The storybook canals of Giethoorn, medieval Bruges across the border, and the bold modern Holland of Rotterdam and The Hague.
By experience
Pick how to spend the day.
Cruise the canals, stand in front of a Rembrandt, ride a bike like a local, or taste your way through the cheese rooms. Plus the Anne Frank walks, the Red Light District and the evening light cruises.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
First time in Amsterdam? A long weekend that mixes the canals and the museums with the countryside around them.
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