Top things to do in Amsterdam

The ten, and what each one costs

The phrase “top things to do” is doing a lot of work and saying very little, so here are the ten with the two numbers that decide an actual day: what they charge at the door, and how long it takes to walk there.

The walking times are routed between doors on the pedestrian network, not straight lines, and they start at Dam Square because that is where most people are standing when they decide what to do next.

The Rijksmuseum and the Red Light District are the two nobody skips. Not the Anne Frank House, which one list skips. Not the Van Gogh Museum, which two do. If you were looking for the short list that everyone genuinely agrees on, it has two items on it and one of them is a neighbourhood you can walk through for nothing.

Six of the ten cost nothing

The Red Light District, the Jordaan, Dam Square, the Albert Cuypmarkt, the Bloemenmarkt and the Vondelpark charge no admission. That is 6 of the ten most recommended things in the city. The four that do charge add up to 82,99 euros for one adult: 25 at the Rijksmuseum, 25 at the Van Gogh, 16,50 at the Anne Frank House and 16,49 for the cheapest widely sold canal cruise.

Free means no admission, not that the visit is free: the Albert Cuypmarkt is a market and the point of a market is to buy something. But it changes the shape of a budget. If you are travelling with children, the arithmetic changes again and mostly in your favour, which we worked through in the guide to doing this with a family.

The list is really two clusters, twenty minutes apart

This is the part a numbered column cannot show you. We measured all ten against each other on the walking network, and they do not form a route. They form two knots with a gap in between.

Between any two things on the list the average walk is 22 minutes, and the two furthest apart, the canal cruise docks and Vondelpark, are 44 minutes and 3.65 km. Treat the two clusters as two half days and the city is easy. Work down the list in the order a blog printed it and you will cross the same twenty minute gap three times.

At the other extreme, Anne Frank House and The Jordaan are 4 minutes apart, which is to say they are one stop that appears twice. The same is true of the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum, five minutes from each other on opposite sides of the same square. A list of twenty things in Amsterdam is usually a list of about eight places.

Worth knowing about, beyond the ten

Five more come up often enough to be worth a name: NEMO Science Museum, the ARTIS zoo, the Foodhallen, the Rembrandt House and the Oude Kerk. They are not lesser places, they are just not on the standard route, and the Oude Kerk is the oldest building in the city.

Where to buy the four that charge, which is not one answer

We checked what the resale platforms charge for the same four things, and it splits cleanly in two. For the museums, buy direct. For the boat, do not bother trying.

The cheapest Van Gogh Museum entry we could find on a resale platform was 39 euros. The museum charges 25 on its own site. That is 56 per cent more for the same ticket, and the versions with a guide run to 60 and 70. The Rijksmuseum is starker still: there is no plain entry ticket resold at all, only guided tours from 72,50 euros against the museum's own 25. The Anne Frank House sells only through its own site, in timed slots, and anything claiming otherwise is selling you a walk past the outside.

So for three of the four, the answer is the boring one: the attraction's own website, which is also where you get the real timed slot. We would rather say that than earn a commission on a ticket you can buy cheaper yourself.

The canal cruise is the exception, and it is a real one. There is no single official operator: dozens of boats run at similar prices, and the platforms are where you can actually compare them by review count instead of by which kiosk you walked past. These three came out of that comparison.

One correction to an earlier version of this page, which said those boats all run the same loop. The loop is much of a muchness. The dock is not, and it is worth more minutes than the boat: the three big operators use six different departure points and, measured on foot from the eight areas in our guide to where to stay, the wrong one costs more walking than the cruise lasts in six of them. That is all in the guide to canal cruises, which is where these boats are properly compared.

The canal cruise, which is the one worth booking through a platform

Our pick

Classic canal cruise, one hour

★★★★★★★★★★4.88 · 31,770

The most reviewed boat in the city by a distance, and the closest thing to a default.

18,30 EUR

60 min · free cancellation

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Open boat cruise, one hour

★★★★★★★★★★4.92 · 5,868

Three cents cheaper and rated higher, on a fifth of the reviews. Open boat, so weather matters.

18,27 EUR

60 min · open boat · free cancellation

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Cruise departing from the Anne Frank House

★★★★★★★★★★4.39 · 759

The cheapest and the longest, and it leaves from the one place on this list you were going anyway. Lowest rated of the three.

13,00 EUR

75 min · leaves beside the Anne Frank House

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Every price is the adult walk-up rate from each place's own site, and every walking time is routed between doors on the pedestrian network. Neither number tells you how long to spend inside, which is the part that actually fills a day.