Amsterdam City Card with Museums & Public Transport

Rijksmuseum and Museumplein

The Rijksmuseum is the national museum of the Netherlands and the first stop for most holders of the Amsterdam City Card. Its red-brick building, opened in 1885, holds the great collection of the Dutch Golden Age: The Night Watch, The Milkmaid, delicate dollhouses, ship models, Delft Blue and a hall of armour. Plan at least two to three hours, and book a time slot in the app before you go, since popular museums can fill up.

The museum stands on Museumplein, a wide lawn shared with the Moco Museum, set in a small villa and devoted to modern and street art, and the Stedelijk Museum of modern design and art, both included with the card. Is the Rijksmuseum worth visiting? Absolutely, even for travellers who rarely enter museums. Note that the Van Gogh Museum next door is not part of the card, so buy that ticket separately if it is on your list.

The Canal Ring and your included canal cruise

Amsterdam's ring of seventeenth-century canals, the Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht, was dug as a planned city extension during the Golden Age and has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 2010. Tall, narrow merchant houses with gabled roofs, hoisting beams and leaning facades line the water, linked by humpbacked bridges that glow with small lights after dark.

Your card includes one canal cruise, and seeing the city from the water is the best introduction to how it was built. A cruise usually lasts about an hour and passes the Skinny Bridge, the Amstel river and the old harbour fronts. Go early in your stay to get your bearings. The card also covers the Museum of the Canals, Museum Van Loon and Museum Willet-Holthuysen, three canal houses where you can see how wealthy merchant families lived behind those facades.

A'DAM Lookout and the IJ waterfront

Across the IJ river from Central Station rises the A'DAM Tower, a former office block that now holds the A'DAM Lookout, an observation deck about 100 metres above the city. From the top you see the whole crescent of canals, the harbour, church towers and, on a clear day, the flat green polders beyond. Daring visitors can ride the swing that hangs over the edge of the roof, bought as an extra on site.

Getting there is part of the fun: the ferries behind Central Station cross the IJ in a few minutes and run day and night at no cost to passengers. The card also covers the EYE Filmmuseum next door and, back on the south bank, the Science Centre NEMO, a favourite with children, and Het Scheepvaartmuseum, the national maritime museum with its full-size replica of an East India Company ship.

Rembrandt House, the Jewish Cultural Quarter and ARTIS

On Jodenbreestraat, the Rembrandt House Museum preserves the house where the painter lived and worked from 1639 to 1658, with his studio, his collection of curiosities and daily etching and paint-making demonstrations. Allow about an hour. A few steps away, the Jewish Cultural Quarter groups the Jewish Museum, the seventeenth-century Portuguese Synagogue, the National Holocaust Museum and the Hollandsche Schouwburg memorial, all on the card.

Continue east into the leafy Plantage district to reach ARTIS Royal Zoo, founded in 1838 and one of the oldest zoos in Europe, with its aquarium, planetarium and Micropia, a museum of microbes that children love. The Hortus Botanicus, a botanical garden with tropical glasshouses, is also included. Tram lines covered by the card connect all of these sights, so you can mix museums and gardens in a single easy day.

Zaanse Schans, Volendam, Marken and Haarlem

A longer card gives you time to leave the city. Zaanse Schans, about 20 minutes north, is a riverside village of green wooden houses and working windmills that grind spices, press oil and saw timber. The card gives free entry to the windmills and the small museums there, including the Zaans Museum. For a Zaanse Schans day trip from Amsterdam, take a regional bus or train, which is not covered, and plan half a day.

Further north-east, the fishing town of Volendam faces the old Zuiderzee, and the card covers the ferry across to Marken, a former island of wooden houses on stilts. West of Amsterdam, Haarlem has a beautiful Grote Markt and the Frans Hals Museum and Teylers Museum, the oldest museum in the Netherlands, both included. The Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen completes the list for those with a full 120 hours.