Museums in Amsterdam

Amsterdam has 47 official museums. Most visitors see four of them.

This page lists every one, from the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum down to a single room in the Jordaan devoted to self-playing pianos. This is a list of recognised museums, not of tourist attractions, so the diamond showrooms and the novelty collections along the Damrak are deliberately absent. Each entry shows the opening days and whether the museum accepts the Museumcard, and the list is kept up to date rather than frozen at the point it was written.

Twenty-eight of the 47 accept the Museumcard. Twenty-four open every day of the week, which matters more than it sounds, because Monday closures catch out more visitors than anything else on the Amsterdam calendar.

The ones most people come for

• Rijksmuseum. The national collection, and the only place to stand in front of Rembrandt’s Night Watch. Open daily.
• Van Gogh Museum. The largest collection of his work anywhere in the world, arranged so you watch the style change year by year.
• Anne Frank House. Timed entry only, and tickets go quickly. Not on the Museumcard.
• Stedelijk Museum. Modern and contemporary art and design, in the building locals still call the bathtub.
• Rembrandt House Museum. His actual house and workshop, with the pigments laid out as he used them.
• NEMO Science Museum. Hands-on, and the roof terrace is one of the best free views in the city.

Worth crossing the city for

The smaller museums are where Amsterdam gets interesting, and almost all of them are quiet even in August.

• Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder. A complete seventeenth-century church hidden in a canal house attic, built when Catholic worship was banned.
• Museum Het Schip. The Amsterdam School movement in the building that defines it, out in the Spaarndammerbuurt.
• Museum Van Loon. A merchant family’s home on the Keizersgracht, left as it was lived in.
• Electric Ladyland. The world’s first museum of fluorescent art, in a basement in the Jordaan.
• Museum Vrolik. One of Europe’s most significant anatomical collections, and not for everyone.
• KattenKabinet. A canal house given over entirely to cats in art. Exactly as odd as it sounds.

The Museumcard in Amsterdam

Twenty-eight of the 47 accept the Museumkaart, including the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk, the Rembrandt House and all three ARTIS museums. It does not cover the Anne Frank House, Moco, or most of the smaller private collections.

A day of museums in Amsterdam

Three museums in a day is comfortable. Four is a route march, and you will remember none of them.

Morning, the Museumplein

Be at the Rijksmuseum for opening and go straight up to the Gallery of Honour before the tour groups form. Two hours is enough to do it properly. The Van Gogh Museum is four minutes away across the square and works better second, because by then you have the seventeenth century fresh for comparison and the change hits harder.

Afternoon, the canal belt

Walk east into the Nine Streets and pick one house museum. Museum Van Loon if you want the merchant version, Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder if you want the strange one, a complete church hidden in an attic. Both are small enough to enjoy on tired legs, which the third museum of the day always is.

If it rains

The Museumplein museums are connected by a five minute walk and nothing else on this list is. Stay there.

With children

NEMO first, because the building is the attraction as much as the exhibits, then Micropia at ARTIS, which is the only museum in the world devoted to microbes and holds attention far longer than parents expect.

On a second day

Go north or west. Museum Het Schip in the Spaarndammerbuurt for Amsterdam School architecture, EYE across the IJ on the free ferry, and STRAAT in the old NDSM shipyard for street art at a scale no gallery can match.

Before you go

• Mondays. Twenty-four of the 47 open every day. The other 23 close at least one day a week, and it is usually Monday.
• The Anne Frank House sells out. Entry is by timed ticket only and it goes weeks ahead in summer. It is the one museum in the city you cannot leave to chance.
• The Museumcard covers 28 of the 47, including everything on the Museumplein, but not the Anne Frank House and not most of the small private collections.
• Last entry is usually earlier than closing, often by half an hour. Arriving at a museum twenty minutes before it shuts rarely works.

Visiting with a private guide

We arrange private guided visits at many of the museums on this page, with tickets and timed entry handled for you and the route built around opening days rather than around a fixed itinerary.

Plan your tour, or see all our private tours.

This page is part of our complete guide to museums in the Netherlands, covering all 1,167 of them.