Five museums hold the art most people come to Amsterdam to see, and three of them share one square.
Below are those five, with addresses, current adult prices and the practical detail that decides whether a visit works - plus the independent galleries in the Jordaan, which charge nothing at all.
1) Rijksmuseum
The Rijksmuseum holds around a million objects and shows roughly 8,000 at a time, of which about 2,000 are Dutch Golden Age paintings.
The Gallery of Honour runs Vermeer, Hals and Steen in sequence and ends at Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch”, which is the route almost everyone walks first.
Three to four hours covers the main floors without rushing; one hour covers the Gallery of Honour and nothing else.
Museumstraat 1, open daily 9:00 to 17:00.
Adult entry is €25 and under-18s go free, with tickets sold online for a timed slot.
The 9:00 slot is the quietest hour of the day by a wide margin.
2) Van Gogh Museum
The Van Gogh Museum holds the largest collection of his work anywhere: over 200 paintings and around 400 drawings.
The three floors run chronologically, so you walk from the dark Dutch years through Paris to Arles and Saint-Rémy in one continuous line.
His letters are shown alongside the paintings, and they are the part visitors tend to remember.
Museumplein 6, open daily from 9:00, with closing times that shift by season.
Adult entry is €25 and under-18s go free.
Timed-entry tickets must be booked online - there is no walk-up queue to join.
3) Stedelijk Museum
The Stedelijk is the modern and contemporary counterweight, covering the late 1800s to now.
Mondrian, Matisse, Pollock and Warhol are all in the permanent collection.
The ground floor pairs the well-known works with a strong industrial design section; the upper floor is where the twentieth-century movements and the temporary shows sit.
Museumplein 10, open daily 10:00 to 18:00.
Adult entry is €22.50, students pay €12.50 and under-19s go free.
It is a two-minute walk from both the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum, which is what makes a three-museum day possible.
4) FOAM
FOAM is the city’s photography museum, and it is the one on this list with no permanent collection to fall back on.
Everything is a temporary exhibition, so what is on when you go matters more here than anywhere else - check the programme before you commit.
It occupies a canal house on the Keizersgracht, which means narrow staircases and small rooms rather than gallery halls.
A visit takes about an hour.
Keizersgracht 609, open Monday to Wednesday and at weekends 10:00 to 18:00, with late opening until 21:00 on Thursdays and Fridays.
Adult entry is €16 and students pay €12.80.
5) Moco Museum
The Moco Museum is privately run and shows modern, street and digital art in a townhouse between the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum.
Banksy, Basquiat, Haring and Warhol anchor it, alongside immersive digital installations that rotate through the lower floors.
It is the smallest of the Museumplein venues and takes about an hour, which makes it a reasonable second stop rather than a day in itself.
Honthorststraat 20, open daily, generally 9:00 to 21:00.
Tickets start at about €17 and rise with the exhibition on show, and entry is timed and booked online.
Note that Moco is not covered by the Museumkaart.
Independent Galleries In The Jordaan
The commercial galleries are free to walk into, take twenty minutes each, and are clustered close enough to string together on foot.
Their opening days are short, so check before you go - most are shut on Sunday and Monday.
Galerie Ron Mandos, Prinsengracht 282, open Wednesday to Saturday 12:00 to 18:00.
It shows established Dutch and international names and runs the annual Best of Graduates show of work by that year’s art-school leavers.
Annet Gelink Gallery, Laurierstraat 187-189, open Tuesday to Saturday 10:00 to 18:00.
Painting, photography, film and installation, with a second space at the back called The Bakery given over to younger artists.
Galerie Fons Welters, Bloemstraat 140.
A converted warehouse behind a small courtyard, known for picking up sculptors and installation artists early in their careers.
Planning A Visit
The Museumkaart Changes The Arithmetic
The Museumkaart costs €69 for a year and covers the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk and FOAM, but not Moco.
Three of those four visits already cost more than the card, so it pays for itself on a single ambitious weekend.
Timing
The big three fill up between 11:00 and 15:00, and the difference between a 9:00 slot and a midday one is the difference between standing in front of a painting and standing behind four people.
Thursday and Friday evenings at FOAM are the quietest hours in the whole list.
Choosing By Interest
Dutch Golden Age painting means the Rijksmuseum; Post-Impressionism means the Van Gogh Museum.
Modern and contemporary means the Stedelijk, photography means FOAM, and street and pop art means Moco.
If you want to see what is being made now rather than what has already been judged, skip all five for an afternoon and walk the Jordaan galleries instead.
