Museum sights in Amsterdam
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House of Bols
The House of Bols is a jenever (Dutch gin) museum run by the Bols distillery. The hour-long, self-guided tour includes a confusing sniff test, a company history and a cocktail made by one of the bartenders who train at the academy upstairs. You must be aged 18 or over to visit.
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Van Gogh Museum
The Van Gogh Museum is one of Amsterdam’s must-sees. Opened in 1973 to house the collection of Vincent’s younger brother Theo, it consists of about 200 paintings and 500 drawings by Vincent and his friends and contemporaries, such as Gauguin, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec and Bernard. Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853 and had a short but astonishingly productive life. Through his paintings, the museum chronicles his journey from Holland, where his work was dark and sombre, to Paris, where, under the influence of the impressionists, he discovered vivid colour. From there he moved to Arles, where he was incredibly productive, often completing a canvas every day. Astoundingly Van …
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Hortus Botanicus
Established in 1638, the Hortus Botanicus became a repository for tropical seeds and plants brought by Dutch ships from the East and West Indies. From here, coffee, pineapple, cinnamon and palm-oil plants were distributed throughout the world. The 4000-plus species are kept in wonderful structures, including the colonial-era seed house and a three-climate glasshouse. The 300-year-old cycad is possibly the world’s oldest potted plant. The butterfly house is a hit with kids and stoned adults. Guided tours (additional €1) are held at 2pm Sunday year-round.
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Madame Tussauds Amsterdam
This is a delight for kids, who will be filled with wonderment when they realise there is absolutely no difference between the wax David Beckham and the real thing. The place is kind of a bellwether of who’s hot in Holland, be it Tiësto (a DJ), Ali B (a rapper) or Princess Maxima. And you can decide for yourself whether Prince Willem-Alexander looks fit to rule or not. Buying tickets online will save you a few euros and get you into the fast-track queue.
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Amsterdam Tulip Museum
Sponsored by a bulb-growing company, this small, rather clinical exhibit traces the prince of petals from its beginnings in Turkey. Displays cover Tulipmania, bulbs as food in the war years, and present-day scientific methods of growing and harvesting. A highlight is the tulip paintings by 17th-century painter Judith Leijster, a student of Frans Hals. The gift shop is one-stop shopping for all your tulip souvenirs.
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Diamond Museum
The Diamond Museum explores the trade’s history and Amsterdam’s shining role in it. The museum is fairly low-tech, and those who are economically minded might want just to go next door to Coster Diamonds (the company owns the museum and is attached to it) and take a free factory tour, where you can see gem cutters at work and hear about the process.
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Allard Pierson Museum
Run by the University of Amsterdam, the Allard Pierson Museum, shows a rich archaeological collection, including an actual mummy, ancient Greek and Mesopotamian vases, a wagon from the royal tombs at Salamis (Cyprus), and galleries stuffed to the wainscoting with other fascinating items.
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Tropenmuseum
The Tropenmuseum is the star attraction. It houses a three-storey collection of colonial artefacts, presented with insight, imagination and a fair amount of multimedia. You can stroll through an African market or a Central Asian yurt (traditional felt hut), see ritual masks and spiky spears, and listen to recordings of exotic musical instruments. There’s a children’s section, a great gift shop and two cafes serving global foods. It’s a grand place to spend a lazy Monday, when many other museums are closed. The attached Tropeninstituut Theater screens films and hosts music, dance and plays by visiting international artists.
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EnergeticA
Housed in a former power station, this quirky museum has a bewildering array of whizz-bang equipment that conjures up visions of mad scientists. Galleries are named for key pioneers (Marconi, Minckelers), and the soaring main hall is filled with steamship engines, gas streetlamps, antique lifts (elevators) from Vienna and Paris and high-voltage generators that send lightning between enormous V-shaped prongs.
There's also an early refrigerator that resembles a brass cement-mixer. Its guides are volunteers, some of them retired engineers, and they'll enthusiastically escort you through centuries of technological history.
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Huis Marseille
This well-curated photography museum stages large-scale, temporary exhibitions, drawing from its own collection as well as hosting travelling shows. Themes might include portraiture, nature or regional photography, spread out over several floors and a ‘summer house’ behind the main house. Huis Marseille also has a noteworthy building. The name refers to its original owner, a French merchant in 1665, and the original structure has remained largely intact. It retains some antique touches such as the 18th-century fountain in the library, and a painting of Apollo, Minerva and the muses in the garden room.
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Nationaal Vakbondsmuseum
Architect HP Berlage considered this building his most successful work, and it's easy to see why. Built in 1900 for the General Netherlands Diamond Workers' Union (ANDB), it's a wonder from the diamond-shaped pinnacle to the magnificent hall with its brick arches, murals, ceramics and leadlight windows by famous artists of the day. The soaring, atrium-style staircase is graced with a chandelier three storeys tall.
All that will be enough for most visitors. Those with abiding interest in labour issues will find the displays (in Dutch) an extra bonus.
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Living Tomorrow Pavilion
A bathroom mirror that displays the latest news? Or a smart washing machine that keeps your red socks out of a white load? These are a couple of the innovations on display at Living Tomorrow, a shoe-shaped home and office of the future. A spate of companies (among others, Phillips, 3M and HP) show off their applications in a living and working environment. The curiously beautiful shape of the building comes from the idea of an object turned inside-out. Visits are by reservation only, and 1½ hour tours in English and Dutch take place Saturday.
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Hermitage Amsterdam
It has fast become one of the city’s most popular attractions since its 2009 opening. The long-standing ties of Russia and Holland – remember Czar Peter the Great learned shipbuilding here in 1697 – led to this local branch of St Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum. Prestigious exhibits, such as treasures from the Russian palace or masterworks by Matisse and Picasso, change about twice per year, and they’re as well-curated as you’d expect. Come before 11am daily or on Wednesday after 5pm (the museum’s late night) to avoid the lengthiest queues.
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Het Oranje Voetbal Museum
Here you’ll find out why, for many Dutch, football isn’t a matter of life or death – it’s much more important than that. Spread over four hallowed floors, this museum tells the story of Orange maestros including Cruyff, Van Basten and Gullit, and the revolution that was Total Football. A tiny cinema shows a 20-minute film with some immortal footage, and hard-core fans can listen to recordings of 100 Orange songs. The downstairs shop is stocked with souvenirs in your favourite colour.
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News Photo
This shop-museum displays enormous blowups of photos that accompany headlines, by photographers from around the world. In fact the museum operates like something of a newsroom itself. Themed exhibitions (terrorism, the Tour de France etc) change every few weeks, but as news is made the curators use giant printers to print out the latest, and - presto - it's up on the conveniently magnetic walls.
You can order fresh prints in a number of sizes, produced on the spot.
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NEMO
The green, shiplike building on the eastern harbour is NEMO, designed by big-name architect Renzo Piano. It’s a science museum with loads of interactive exhibits to entertain kids, such as drawing with a laser, ‘antigravity’ trick mirrors, and a ‘lab’ where you can answer questions such as ‘How black is black?’ and ‘How do you make cheese?’ NEMO’s stepped roof (admission free) is the city’s largest summer terrace, and worth a stair climb for its fantastic views.
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Museum Amstelkring
The Museum Amstelkring hides a secret church. Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder (Our Dear Lord in the Attic), as it’s known, was a Catholic chapel set up c 1578 after the Calvinists seized power and outlawed other religions. Inside you’ll find the city’s richest collection of Catholic art, a labyrinth of tiled staircases, cubbyhole quarters and the unexpectedly grand worship room itself. The museum is being renovated through to 2011, but remains open to visitors.
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Arcam
Arcam is the Amsterdam Architecture Foundation’s stunning facility, which should be the first port of call for architecture and urban-design fans. It offers changing exhibits on the city’s buildings, and reference materials on just about anything built in town, from early history to the very latest housing development. Among the best titles are Twenty-five Buildings You Should Have Seen and Eastern Docklands Map.
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Amsterdams Historisch Museum
The fascinating Amsterdams Historisch Museum resides in the former civic orphanage (which was here till 1960). Begin with the large-screen TV showing an aerial view of Amsterdam’s evolution, from tiny settlement on the Amstel to canal-crossed metropolis. Exhibits include religious objects, porcelains, a detailed history of Dutch trading, bicycle use, WWII, gay rights, civic projects and the city’s drug policies.
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Houseboat Museum
The offbeat Houseboat Museum is aboard a sailing barge (23m long by 4m wide) from 1914. The displays are rather minimal, but you’ll get a real feel for how cosy life can be on the water when you see the sleeping, living, cooking and dining quarters. In case you were wondering: houseboat toilets, until this century, could drain directly into the canals, but they now must hook up to the city sewerage system.
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Electric Lady Land
For art of an entirely different ilk, visit Electric Lady Land, the world’s first museum of fluorescence. Even if you didn’t eat a space cake before arriving, you’re gonna feel like it, as grey-ponytailed artist and owner Nick Padalino takes you to his shop’s basement and shows you all kinds of glow-in-the-dark objects, from psychedelic sculptures to luminescent rocks.
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Werfmuseum ’T Kromhout
On the outer side of the dyke is an 18th-century wharf that still repairs boats in its western hall. The eastern hall is a museum devoted to shipbuilding and even more to the indestructible marine engines that were designed and built here. Anyone with an interest in marine engineering will love the place; others will probably want to move on. Signage is almost entirely in Dutch only.
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Beurs van Berlage
It is the old stock-and-commodities exchange designed by renowned architect HP Berlage. The functional lines and chunky square clock tower are landmarks of Dutch urban architecture. Today the building is home to the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and hosts occasional museum exhibitions. Roam the premises, or grab a bite and ponder the murals in the cafe.
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Persmuseum
The caretaker of Dutch journalism history, this museum is loads more interesting to non-Dutch speakers than it may sound. Housed in sleek new premises, it has a large collection of historic newspapers (going all the way back to 1600), political and editorial cartoons and press photos, and a great stock of old publicity posters, many of them quite amusing.
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Rijksmuseum
The Rijksmuseum is the premier art museum of the Netherlands, and no self-respecting visitor to Amsterdam can afford to miss it. Though most of the building is closed for renovations until 2013, there is an excellent collection of around 200 masterpieces – a sort of 'best of’ group – exhibited in a side section, the Philips wing.
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