Hotel TwentySeven is sixteen suites on Dam Square, looking straight across at the Royal Palace. We are a private tour company based here in Amsterdam, and this is the easiest address in the city to walk out of: the old centre begins at the end of the block, the canal ring is eight minutes west, and almost every tour we run can start in your lobby rather than at a meeting point somewhere across town.
Hotel TwentySeven has sixteen suites and nothing else. No standard rooms, no category below suite, with the Signature Suite running to 219 square metres. Eric Toren, twice Hotelier of the Year, built it inside a turn of the century building on the north side of Dam 27, and it sits in Small Luxury Hotels of the World. Downstairs are Bougainville, which holds a Michelin star under Tim Golsteijn, its smaller sister BO, and Bar TwentySeven looking straight out over the square.
That view is the reason we like starting tours here. Almost nobody staying on Dam Square knows they are standing on the thing the city is named after.
The story every guide repeats is that a dam was thrown across the river Amstel here around 1270, and that Amstelredam became Amsterdam. The lord Gijsbrecht II is usually credited with ordering it, and it may have been less an earth dam than a wide bridge with wooden doors.
Historians are less certain than the guidebooks are. Versions of the name appear in documents before the dam is supposed to have been built, and the word itself probably meant something closer to the people settled at the dike along the river than a single piece of engineering. It is a better story with the doubt left in, which is how we tell it.
What is not in doubt is the water. Nothing of the dam survives above ground, but the Amstel still flows under the square in a culvert, beneath the trams and the pigeons and the queue for Madame Tussauds.
The Royal Palace opposite your windows was not built as a palace. It went up from 1648 as Amsterdam’s city hall, designed by Jacob van Campen at the height of the Golden Age, and it stands on 13,659 wooden piles driven into the sand, because there is no rock under this city to build on.
The poet Constantijn Huygens called it the Eighth Wonder of the World, which was the kind of thing Amsterdam thought about itself in 1650. It only became a palace in 1808, when Lodewijk Napoleon, the first King of Holland and Napoleon’s brother, moved in and turned the council chambers into a royal residence. The Dutch monarchy inherited it afterwards and never gave it back.
It is a five minute conversation and you can have it standing in the hotel doorway, which is why our architecture tour often begins right here rather than at a meeting point somewhere else.
Six more that work well from Dam Square. The Anne Frank House is a ten minute walk west, and the food and architecture tours start on foot from the hotel. The Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh tours head south to the Museumplein, by tram or on foot with your guide, and Guide for a Day leaves the plan entirely to you.
Private Anne Frank and Jewish History Walking TourFrom 515 euroView this tour
Private Rijksmuseum TourFrom 360 euroView this tour
Private Van Gogh Museum TourFrom 325 euroView this tour
Private Dutch Food Tour, Eat Like a LocalFrom 445 euroView this tour
Private Architecture Tour AmsterdamFrom 400 euroView this tour
Guide for a DayFrom 1,000 euroView this tourSee all our private tours from Amsterdam about Private Tours Amsterdam
We collect you at the hotel with a car and a private guide and bring you back to the same door. Zaanse Schans and the windmill villages, the tulip fields and Keukenhof in season, Delft and The Hague, Giethoorn, the cheese towns. Most run seven to nine hours, and the full choice is on our private driving tours page.
Dam Square is the one practical wrinkle. It is pedestrianised and busy, so the car does not come to the door. We agree a precise spot a minute or two away and a precise time, and confirm it with you directly the evening before, so nobody is standing in the square looking at traffic.
The National Monument, the white column on your side of the square, was unveiled in 1956 for the dead of the Second World War. Every year on 4 May the King lays a wreath there and the entire country observes two minutes of silence at eight in the evening. Trams stop. Cyclists get off and stand still. People on the far side of the country stop in the street.
If you are here on that date, we will tell you where to stand and when to be quiet, and leave you to it. It is the single most affecting thing a visitor can witness in Amsterdam, and it happens in front of your hotel.
A large share of our work comes through advisors and concierge teams. One point of contact, written confirmations your client can read before they fly, guides who arrive early, and direct contact with the guests themselves the day before so everyone knows where and when to meet. Our travel advisor page has the commission terms and a direct line.
If the concierge would rather hold the booking, they can. Send them our details and we will deal with them directly.
At the hotel. Walking tours begin in the lobby, and for driving tours the car waits a minute or two away, because Dam Square itself is pedestrianised. We confirm the meeting point with you directly the day before.
That is the story, and it is roughly right. A dam or sluice went across the Amstel here in the thirteenth century, and versions of the name Amstelredam follow. Historians argue about the dates, and nothing of the dam is visible now, though the river still runs under the square in a culvert. Our City Highlights tour starts with it.
Yes. Private tours are built around your interests, pace, mobility and timing, including changes on the day where they are workable. If you would rather not decide in advance, Guide for a Day is exactly that.
Yes. For anything outside Amsterdam we provide a car with a professional driver or a driver guide, depending on group size and the plan. The choices are on our private driving tours page.
English as standard, and we also have guides in German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch. Tell us which you would prefer when you enquire.
There is no cut-off, and last minute is genuinely fine. Two to four weeks ahead gives the widest choice of guides, and Keukenhof in April and the Anne Frank tours do fill up, but we arrange tours at short notice all the time. If you want something tomorrow, just ask through the contact page or call.
