Private Tours for Hotel De L’Europe Guests

A tower, an inn, and then a grand hotel

In 1482 the city built a round defensive tower here, Het Rondeel, to guard the point where the Amstel ran into Amsterdam. Within fifty years the city had grown past it and by 1535 it no longer defended anything. In 1638 an inn went up partly on the tower’s old foundations, and in 1845 it reopened as a guesthouse still called Het Rondeel. On 23 September 1896 the building you are staying in opened its doors as Hotel De L’Europe.

Just before the Second World War Alfred Hitchcock used the hotel as a location for Foreign Correspondent. The story goes that he had part of the rooftop sign switched off, so that it read Hot Europe, which was about as subtle as a 1940 audience needed. In the 1950s Freddy Heineken became a regular, then bought the place, and it has stayed in the Heineken family ever since. The bar is named after him.

Next to Freddy’s Bar is Brasserie Marie, named after another Heineken altogether. Marie Heineken was a cousin of the brewery’s founder, Gerard Adriaan Heineken. Born in 1844, she trained at the Rijksakademie under August Allebé and painted for more than seventy years, flowers, still lifes and cityscapes, until her death in 1930. The brasserie takes her as its muse, a strong and independent woman with a taste for the colour of the Côte d’Azur, and serves it as a Parisian brasserie with a terrace on the water. The Marie Heinekenplein in De Pijp, where the first Heineken beer was brewed in 1868, carries her name as well.

Today that makes De L’Europe something rare: a family-owned grand hotel on the water, with Flore holding two Michelin stars downstairs and a terrace on the Amstel that most Amsterdammers would give a great deal to have.

The tower across the road

Step out of the front door and the first thing you see is the Munttoren. It began life as the Regulierspoort, one of the three main gates in the medieval city wall, built between 1480 and 1487. A fire in 1618 took most of it, and Hendrick de Keyser gave what was left the spire you see now, finished in 1620.

The name is an accident of war. In 1672 and 1673, with the French invading and Amsterdam cut off from its usual mints, the city struck its own emergency ducats in the old guardhouse. The minting lasted barely a year. The name has lasted three and a half centuries. The carillon still plays every quarter of an hour, and on Saturday afternoons at two the city carillonneur climbs up and plays it live.

Everything within a ten minute walk

• The Munttoren and the flower market. Across the road. The floating stalls of the Bloemenmarkt line the Singel from here.
• Rembrandtplein. Five minutes east, with Rembrandt himself on a pedestal in the middle.
• Dam Square and the Royal Palace. Eight minutes north up the Kalverstraat or the Rokin.
• The Begijnhof. About six minutes, a hidden medieval courtyard off the Spui.
• The old centre. Five minutes, across the Amstel.
• The Rijksmuseum. About fifteen minutes on foot through the Spiegelkwartier. By car it is slower, twenty minutes or more, because cars have to loop round the ring road.

Six more private tours for De L’Europe guests

Six more we recommend from De L’Europe. City Highlights and Amsterdam in a Day both begin at the Munttoren across the road. The Van Gogh tour is a walk south through the Spiegelkwartier, the food tour crosses the Amstel into the old centre, and the architecture tour can start with the hotel’s own 1896 facade. Guide for a Day is there if you would rather keep the day open.

Amsterdam City Highlights Private TourFrom 400 euroView this tourPrivate Van Gogh Museum TourFrom 325 euroView this tourPrivate Dutch Food Tour, Eat Like a LocalFrom 445 euroView this tourPrivate Architecture Tour AmsterdamFrom 400 euroView this tourGuide for a DayFrom 1,000 euroView this tourThe Ultimate Amsterdam in a Day TourFrom 990 euroView this tour

See all our private tours from Amsterdam about Private Tours Amsterdam

Day trips, with a car from the hotel

For a day outside the city we arrive at the Muntplein with a car and a private guide, and have you back at the hotel in good time for the evening. Windmills at Zaanse Schans, tulips at Keukenhof in spring, Delft and The Hague, Giethoorn, or the castles of Muiderslot and De Haar all fit comfortably into a day. Every option is on our private driving tours page.

The Muntplein is a tram junction and busy all day, so we agree a precise pick-up spot and time and confirm it with you directly the evening before.

For travel advisors and the concierge desk

Much of what we do at this end of the Amstel is booked by advisors and concierges on behalf of their guests, so we keep the handover simple. You deal with one person from first enquiry to the end of the tour, your client receives a written itinerary before they travel, and we speak to the guests themselves the evening before. Commission terms and a direct number are on our travel advisor page.

Guests who prefer to book through the hotel’s own desk can do exactly that, and we take it from there.

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