Like the Van Gogh Museum the Rijksmuseum is almost always busy, so On the Prinsengracht, the Anne Frank House preserves the secret annexe where the young diarist Anne Frank hid from Nazi persecution from 1942 until she was captured along with her family and four other inhabitants in 1944. There’s a cafe, Vertigo, in the basement, with seating on the terrace outside.Patrician’s Canal in English, the Herengracht is the first of the four main canals in the city centre’s Canal Belt.This waterway was completed along with its neighbours in the 17th century as part of an expansion project that is now UNESCO listed.As the name may tell you, the Herengracht was where Amsterdam’s social elite built their grand gabled houses, and that sense of prestige has continued into the 21st century.Take your time as there’s much to see, and almost every building is a work of art.You’ll pass the former office of the Dutch West India Company at Herenmarkt and one of Amsterdam’s oldest residences (built in 1590) at 81.
There are guided tours of the Concertgebouw on Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, taking you to parts of the building you wouldn’t otherwise see, and passing on interesting stories from this monument’s 130-year past.In Oud-Zuid’s De Pijp there’s a street-length outdoor market on Albert Cuypstraat, from Ferdinand Bolstraat to Van Woustraat.The Albert Cuyp Market came together at the turn of the 20th century to bring some order to the hordes of traders and hawkers who would set up shop here.Originally just a Saturday night affair, the market trades Monday to Saturday during daytime hours, with 300 stalls on both sides of the street completely shutting down traffic.You can find it all here; fresh produce, cheese, herring, spices, fabrics, cosmetics, fashion accessories, but also Surinamese, Moroccan and Antillean specialities.The high competition keeps prices low and there may not be a better place to see real Amsterdammers going about their day.Right on Rokin in the centre of Amsterdam is the world’s first museum devoted to sustainable fashion innovation.At Fashion for Good, which only opened in October 2018, you’ll be confronted by the absurd wastefulness of the fashion industry in the 21st century.For instance, almost 60% of all clothing ends up in landfill or being burnt within one year of production.Using installations made with found or cradle-to-cradle materials, Fashion for Good shows off the work of some 50 innovators who aim to right some of the industry’s wrongs.Take Mycotex, which produces fabrics using myco-proteins, or Colorfix, creating dyes from engineered microorganisms.You’ll find out about biodegradable glitter and polyester, lifelike leather made from apples and see how blockchain technology is changing production.Everything in the museum’s shop is sustainable, and the Design Studio lets you create your own sustainable t-shirt, printed on site.The Plantage neighbourhood was planned as an eastern extension of the Canal Belt, but lack of demand for housing in the 17th century allowed this corner of the city to stay leafy and spacious.There’s a surplus of visitor attractions in this corner of Amsterdam.One of the most vital is Hortus Botanicus, founded in 1638 and among the oldest botanical gardens in the world.In those early years the garden grew medicinal herbs for doctors and pharmacists at a time when plague outbreaks were still common.Hortus Botanicus moved to its current location in 1682 and was soon planted with species gathered from all ends of the earth by the Dutch East India Company.More than 6,000 plant species grow at Hortus Botanicus today, and remarkably, a single coffee plant in this collection lead to widespread plantations around the world.Don’t miss the 17th-century hexagonal pavilion, or the cycads in the Palm House (1915), built in the style of the Amsterdam School.You couldn’t be blamed for wanting to know more about a city built on stilts and renowned for free thought, tolerance, Johan Cruyff, the Dutch East India Company, architectural innovation, a famous Red Light District and much more.You can pull on all of these threads and many more at the Amsterdam Museum.The setting is a former convent that became an orphanage during the Reformation.For a whirlwind tour through Amsterdam’s past, Amsterdam DNA is an hour-long experience using interactive stations, specially selected artefacts and ambient effects.World – City is a new permanent exhibition exploring Amsterdam’s relationship with the rest of the world down the centuries.One exceptional piece is the Medieval aerial map from the Middle Ages, and the painting The Dam by the leading Amsterdam Impressionist George Hendrik Breitner.The only museum dedicated to Jewish history in the Netherlands is in a complex of four synagogues dating back to 1671, opposite the Portuguese Synagogue.Joint tickets are sold for these attractions, and the Joods Historisch Museum gives an enthralling account of 400+ years of Judaism in Amsterdam.These buildings had been unused by the Jewish community from the Holocaust up to the museum’s establishment in 1987.
There are guided tours of the Concertgebouw on Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, taking you to parts of the building you wouldn’t otherwise see, and passing on interesting stories from this monument’s 130-year past.In Oud-Zuid’s De Pijp there’s a street-length outdoor market on Albert Cuypstraat, from Ferdinand Bolstraat to Van Woustraat.The Albert Cuyp Market came together at the turn of the 20th century to bring some order to the hordes of traders and hawkers who would set up shop here.Originally just a Saturday night affair, the market trades Monday to Saturday during daytime hours, with 300 stalls on both sides of the street completely shutting down traffic.You can find it all here; fresh produce, cheese, herring, spices, fabrics, cosmetics, fashion accessories, but also Surinamese, Moroccan and Antillean specialities.The high competition keeps prices low and there may not be a better place to see real Amsterdammers going about their day.Right on Rokin in the centre of Amsterdam is the world’s first museum devoted to sustainable fashion innovation.At Fashion for Good, which only opened in October 2018, you’ll be confronted by the absurd wastefulness of the fashion industry in the 21st century.For instance, almost 60% of all clothing ends up in landfill or being burnt within one year of production.Using installations made with found or cradle-to-cradle materials, Fashion for Good shows off the work of some 50 innovators who aim to right some of the industry’s wrongs.Take Mycotex, which produces fabrics using myco-proteins, or Colorfix, creating dyes from engineered microorganisms.You’ll find out about biodegradable glitter and polyester, lifelike leather made from apples and see how blockchain technology is changing production.Everything in the museum’s shop is sustainable, and the Design Studio lets you create your own sustainable t-shirt, printed on site.The Plantage neighbourhood was planned as an eastern extension of the Canal Belt, but lack of demand for housing in the 17th century allowed this corner of the city to stay leafy and spacious.There’s a surplus of visitor attractions in this corner of Amsterdam.One of the most vital is Hortus Botanicus, founded in 1638 and among the oldest botanical gardens in the world.In those early years the garden grew medicinal herbs for doctors and pharmacists at a time when plague outbreaks were still common.Hortus Botanicus moved to its current location in 1682 and was soon planted with species gathered from all ends of the earth by the Dutch East India Company.More than 6,000 plant species grow at Hortus Botanicus today, and remarkably, a single coffee plant in this collection lead to widespread plantations around the world.Don’t miss the 17th-century hexagonal pavilion, or the cycads in the Palm House (1915), built in the style of the Amsterdam School.You couldn’t be blamed for wanting to know more about a city built on stilts and renowned for free thought, tolerance, Johan Cruyff, the Dutch East India Company, architectural innovation, a famous Red Light District and much more.You can pull on all of these threads and many more at the Amsterdam Museum.The setting is a former convent that became an orphanage during the Reformation.For a whirlwind tour through Amsterdam’s past, Amsterdam DNA is an hour-long experience using interactive stations, specially selected artefacts and ambient effects.World – City is a new permanent exhibition exploring Amsterdam’s relationship with the rest of the world down the centuries.One exceptional piece is the Medieval aerial map from the Middle Ages, and the painting The Dam by the leading Amsterdam Impressionist George Hendrik Breitner.The only museum dedicated to Jewish history in the Netherlands is in a complex of four synagogues dating back to 1671, opposite the Portuguese Synagogue.Joint tickets are sold for these attractions, and the Joods Historisch Museum gives an enthralling account of 400+ years of Judaism in Amsterdam.These buildings had been unused by the Jewish community from the Holocaust up to the museum’s establishment in 1987.