The Andaz sits on the Prinsengracht in a building that spent thirty years as Amsterdam’s central public library, and it still has the bones of one. Our guides live and work in Amsterdam, and this stretch of the canal ring is an easy place to begin: the Rijksmuseum is fourteen minutes on foot, the Anne Frank House twelve and Leidseplein eight. Walks leave from the lobby, and for anything further we come to the door with a car.
The building at Prinsengracht 587 was designed in the 1970s as offices by R.F.L. Nord of the Gerard de Klerk practice, and strengthened late in the process so that its floors could carry the weight of a library. On 12 February 1977 Prime Minister Joop den Uyl opened it as the Openbare Bibliotheek, the city’s main public library, with some 200,000 books, 40,000 records and 500 study places. For three decades this was where Amsterdam came to read.
In 2007 the library moved to its new home on the Oosterdok, next to Centraal station, and the canal building waited for a new purpose. It reopened in 2012 as the Andaz, with interiors by the Amsterdam designer Marcel Wanders. He treated the job as a portrait of the city: Delft Blue patterns, old nautical maps worked into carpets and walls, outsized bells, and a steady nod to the books that once filled the place. Between the two wings is a garden that most people walking along the canal never know is there.
That makes it a good first chapter for a tour. Most of the canal ring is seventeenth-century merchant houses, and this is one of the few places where you can see how the twentieth century tried to fit in, and how the twenty-first then reinvented what it left behind.
About ten minutes from the hotel, on the Herengracht, is the KattenKabinet, a museum devoted entirely to cats. Bob Meijer opened it in 1990 in memory of his red tomcat, John Pierpont Morgan, and it is exactly as eccentric as that sounds. The house is the real surprise: it was built in 1667 for the brothers Willem and Adriaen van Loon, and its grand canal-side rooms are among the few interiors of their kind you can simply walk into.
The Van Loon name turns up again on the Keizersgracht, at Museum Van Loon, a house of 1672 by the architect Adriaen Dortsman. Its first tenant was the painter Ferdinand Bol, a pupil of Rembrandt. Behind it lie a formal garden and a coach house, and upstairs the rooms are hung with the family’s portraits. Between the two you get a clearer sense of how canal-house life actually worked than any Golden Age gallery can give you.
Ask your guide to include any of these. They feature in the Private Architecture Tour Amsterdam and in the Private Rijksmuseum Tour, with six more tours listed below.
Six more we would suggest from the Andaz. Anne Frank’s house is on your own canal, and the Van Gogh tour follows the Rijksmuseum route before carrying on across the Museumplein. The photo tour works the Leidsegracht and the quiet stretch of the Prinsengracht outside the door, and Brews and T’Ales finds the brown cafés the canal ring still hides. For a whole day, Guide for a Day keeps the plan open, and Zaanse Schans is the classic windmill trip by car.
Private Anne Frank and Jewish History Walking TourFrom 515 euroView this tour
Private Van Gogh Museum TourFrom 325 euroView this tour
Private Photo Tour AmsterdamFrom 400 euroView this tour
Brews and T’Ales, Private Craft Beer TourFrom 500 euroView this tour
Guide for a DayFrom 1,000 euroView this tour
Private Zaanse Schans Windmill and Dutch Villages TourFrom 1,100 euroView this tourSee all our private tours from Amsterdam about Private Tours Amsterdam
For the countryside your guide arrives on the Prinsengracht with a car and brings you back to the same door in time for the evening. Zaanse Schans and Volendam, Keukenhof in tulip season, Delft and The Hague, Utrecht or the windmills of Kinderdijk all fit into a day without rushing. The full list is on our private driving tours page.
The Prinsengracht is a narrow canal street with cyclists on every side, so the car only stops briefly at the entrance. We confirm the time with you ourselves the night before.
Advisors send us Andaz guests for the design as much as the location, so every guide we send is briefed on the building before meeting your clients. You work with one person from the first enquiry to the last day, your clients receive a written itinerary before they arrive, and we speak to them ourselves the night before each tour. Commission terms are on our travel advisor page.
If your guests would rather arrange things at the hotel, the concierge can book with us and we take it from there.
Walks begin in the lobby at Prinsengracht 587. For driving tours the car pulls up briefly outside the entrance, and we confirm the exact time with you the night before.
Fourteen minutes on foot, through the antique shops of the Spiegelkwartier. Our private Rijksmuseum tour with an art historian can start in your lobby and use the walk as its introduction.
Yes. From 1977 to 2007 Prinsengracht 587 was Amsterdam’s central public library, opened by Prime Minister Joop den Uyl. Marcel Wanders kept the nod to books when he designed the hotel, which is why our architecture tour likes to begin here.
It is twelve minutes north along the Prinsengracht. Entry tickets are sold online only and released in advance, so tell us your dates early and we will time our Anne Frank and Jewish history tour around your slot.
Yes, the Andaz concierge is welcome to arrange it for you, or you can get in touch with us yourself. Either way we confirm the details with you personally the night before.
Often, yes. A few weeks ahead gives you the widest choice of guides, but we regularly arrange tours for the next day and sometimes the same day. The quickest route is our contact page or a phone call.
