The Amstel Hotel has stood on the river since 1867, and for most of that time it has been where Amsterdam puts its most important visitors. Our guides are Amsterdammers, and the hotel is a fine place to set out from. From here the Magere Brug is seven minutes on foot, the Rembrandt House seventeen and the Rijksmuseum twenty-one, and any of our tours can begin at the front door.
The hotel was the idea of Samuel Sarphati, a doctor who spent his career trying to modernise Amsterdam, from public health to a great new exhibition hall. In 1864 he set up the company that would build it and hired the architect Cornelis Outshoorn, who had already designed Sarphati’s Paleis voor Volksvlijt, a glass palace inspired by London’s Crystal Palace. Sarphati died in 1866. The hotel opened the following year, a palace in the French manner on a scale the city had never seen.
The Paleis voor Volksvlijt burned down in 1929 and De Nederlandsche Bank now stands on its site, but the hotel came through everything. During the occupation the Germans took Sarphati’s name off the park in De Pijp that honoured him, because he was Jewish, and it only came back in 1945. That September, Field Marshal Montgomery arrived at the Amstel Hotel for a lunch given by the Dutch government, and the hotel went back to doing what it has always done best.
State occasions followed. In October 1970 the government gave a banquet here for President Tito of Yugoslavia, with Princess Beatrix and Prince Claus among the guests. Around 1990 the hotel closed for two years of restoration and reopened with fewer, larger rooms, and in 2017 and 2018 the facade and roof were restored again, down to the eight lions on the roofline.
Seven minutes up the river is the Magere Brug, the skinny bridge. You will be told that two sisters built it so they could visit each other across the water. Archive research suggests something less charming: a grand stone bridge was planned, then cut back after the economic disaster of 1672. The bridge you see today dates from 1934, designed by Piet Kramer, and after dark it is outlined by 1,200 lights.
Just across it is the Amstelhof, built in 1682 as a home for elderly women and used as a care home until 2007. It reopened as a branch of the Hermitage in 2009 and, after the museum ended its link with St Petersburg in 2022, became the H’ART Museum in 2023. Few people strolling past realise how old it is.
These are the places our guides work into a morning on foot. The Private Anne Frank and Jewish History Walking Tour and the Luxury Private Amsterdam VIP Tour both take them in, and the six tours further down cover the rest of the city.
Six more we suggest from the Amstel Hotel. The Van Gogh tour pairs naturally with the Rijksmuseum for a morning in the museum quarter, and the food tour is the best way to eat your way through the markets and brown cafés. City Highlights and the architecture tour walk you from the river into the canal ring. Guide for a Day leaves the plan open, and Zaanse Schans is the easy windmill day by car.
Private Van Gogh Museum TourFrom 325 euroView this tour
Private Dutch Food Tour, Eat Like a LocalFrom 445 euroView this tour
Amsterdam City Highlights Private TourFrom 400 euroView this tour
Private Architecture Tour AmsterdamFrom 400 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
The hotel sits on the edge of the old centre, which makes it quick to get out of town. Your guide arrives with a car and brings you back before dinner. The windmills of Zaanse Schans, Keukenhof in tulip season, Delft and The Hague, the fortress town of Naarden, or the castle at Muiderslot are all an easy day. Our private driving tours page lists them all.
We agree the exact pick-up point at the hotel with you in person the evening before.
Guests at the Amstel expect the tour to match the hotel, and that is how we plan it: a guide chosen for the client rather than the calendar, a written itinerary before arrival, and one person on our side from the first enquiry to the final goodbye. We speak to your clients in person the evening before each tour. Commission terms are on our travel advisor page.
The hotel’s concierge team can also book with us on a guest’s behalf, and we handle everything from there.
Yes. Walking tours begin at the hotel, and for driving tours the car comes to the hotel for you. We confirm the exact spot and time with you in person the evening before.
Twenty-one minutes on foot along the Weteringschans, or about twelve by car. Our private Rijksmuseum tour with an art historian can start at the hotel.
Yes. The streets around the Waterlooplein and the Rembrandt House are fifteen to twenty minutes on foot along the Amstel. Let us know if you would like them to be part of your Anne Frank and Jewish history tour and we will plan the route from the hotel.
The doctor and city reformer who founded the hotel company in 1864. He died in 1866, a year before the hotel opened, and Sarphatipark in De Pijp is named after him. Our guides on the VIP tour tell his story along the way.
Yes. The concierge team can book with us for you, or you can get in touch yourself. Either way we confirm everything with you personally the evening before.
Usually not. Booking a few weeks ahead gives you the most choice of guides, but we arrange next-day tours all the time and sometimes same-day ones too. Our contact page or a phone call is the fastest way to ask.
