Museums in Rotterdam

Rotterdam has 35 museums, and the one everybody searches for is shut.

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the city’s great art collection, is closed for a long renovation. What is open is the Depot next door, the world’s first publicly accessible art store, where you can walk among the racks and see the collection being conserved rather than curated. For many visitors it is the better experience, and almost nobody arrives knowing it exists.

This page lists all 35, with opening days and Museumcard status. Eighteen accept the card. Only three open every day of the week, which makes Rotterdam a city to plan rather than wander.

What to see while Boijmans is closed

• Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen. The mirrored bowl in the Museumpark. The collection is visible in storage, the rooftop is public, and it is on the Museumcard.
• Kunsthal Rotterdam. No permanent collection at all, just a fast rotation of major exhibitions in a Rem Koolhaas building. Worth checking what is on before you go, because the programme changes completely.
• Collectiegebouw Boijmans. The public collection building, where conservation happens in the open.

The rest of the first rank

• Maritime Museum Rotterdam. The port explained properly, with a harbour of historic ships outside.
• Nederlands Fotomuseum. The national photography collection, on the Katendrecht waterfront.
• Wereldmuseum Rotterdam. World cultures, in the former Royal Yacht Club on the Maas.
• Het Nieuwe Instituut. Architecture, design and digital culture, and the reason Rotterdam thinks about buildings differently to the rest of the country.
• FENIX Museum of Migration. Built in a dockside warehouse on the quay where millions left for America.

The ones that surprise people

• Kijk-Kubus Museumwoning. One of the cube houses, furnished, so you can find out what living at forty-five degrees actually involves.
• Sonneveld House. A 1933 villa left exactly as its family furnished it, and the best surviving interior of Dutch functionalism.
• Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam. Small, sharp, and home to some famously odd specimens.
• Dutch Pinball Museum. Ninety machines, all set to free play.
• Chabot Museum. A white modernist villa in the Museumpark given over to one expressionist painter.

A day of museums in Rotterdam

Rotterdam’s museums are not spread out the way Amsterdam’s are. Most of the big ones sit in or around the Museumpark, and the rest are on the water.

Morning, the Museumpark

Start at the Depot when it opens, because the rooftop is best before the light goes flat and the building fills. Then walk two minutes to the Kunsthal for whatever it is showing. Sonneveld House is on the same block if you want a third, and it takes barely forty minutes.

Afternoon, the water

Take the tram or the water taxi south to Katendrecht for the Fotomuseum and FENIX, which sit near each other on the old quays. The water taxi is not a tourist gimmick here, it is how people cross, and it gives you the skyline from the angle the city was built to be seen from.

With children

Maritime Museum first, for the ships you can climb on, then Villa Zebra, which is built entirely around children making things rather than looking at them.

If it rains

Stay in the Museumpark. The Depot, the Kunsthal, Het Nieuwe Instituut and Chabot are all within a few minutes of each other on foot.

Before you go

• Boijmans main building is closed. Do not plan a day around it. The Depot and the collection building are open and on the Museumcard.
• Only three of the 35 open every day. Rotterdam museums close on Mondays more consistently than Amsterdam’s.
• Eighteen take the Museumcard, including the Depot, the Kunsthal, the Maritime Museum and the Fotomuseum.
• The Kunsthal has no permanent collection. Check the current exhibition before you build a day around it.

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. Our private Rotterdam city and harbour day trip covers the modern architecture, the cube houses and a boat trip through the harbour.

Plan your tour, or see all our private tours.

This page is part of our complete guide to museums in the Netherlands, covering all 1,002 of them.