Amsterdam Self-Guided Walking Audio Tour

The walk stop by stop: Centraal, the Oude Kerk, Dam Square, the Westerkerk

15 stops · about 60 min walking · start: Amsterdam Centraal · finish: Amsterdam Tulip Museum

The first stop is Amsterdam Centraal, so the walk can begin the moment you arrive. The Basilica of Saint Nicholas stands opposite, after which the route crosses the Oosterdok to the NEMO Science Museum and comes back through Chinatown along the Zeedijk. Red Light Secrets, a museum about sex work in a former canal-house brothel, and the Oude Kerk follow, then the Beurs van Berlage and BODY WORLDS on the Damrak, where preserved human bodies are on show. Dam Square brings the National Monument, Madame Tussauds and the Royal Palace, De 9 Straatjes cross the canals towards the Westerkerk and the Anne Frank Monument, and the Amsterdam Tulip Museum closes the walk. Another opening stop or another order is set in the app, and no stop needs an entry ticket.

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1. 

   1Amsterdam CentraalStart

   Amsterdam's main railway station opened in 1889 and was designed by Pierre Cuypers, the architect of the Rijksmuseum. It stands on three artificial islands in the IJ, resting on thousands of wooden piles, and its long red-brick front faces the old city.

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   2Basilica of Saint Nicholas

   This Catholic church opposite the station was built in 1884–1887 to designs by Adrianus Bleijs, in a mix of neo-Baroque and neo-Renaissance styles. A statue of Saint Nicholas, patron saint of sailors and of Amsterdam, stands high on the front between the two towers, and the church became a basilica in 2012.

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3. 3NEMO Science Museum

   NEMO is the largest science centre in the Netherlands and stands on the Oosterdok in a green copper-clad building by Renzo Piano, completed in 1997. The museum dates back to 1923, when it opened as the Museum van den Arbeid, the Museum of Labour. Five floors hold hands-on exhibits, and the sloping roof forms a public square 22 metres above the water, built over the entrance to the road tunnel under the IJ.

4. 4Chinatown

   Amsterdam's Chinatown spreads around the Zeedijk, the Geldersekade and the Nieuwmarkt, and the curving Zeedijk still follows the line of a medieval sea dike that held back the water of the IJ. Chinese sailors from Guangdong, recruited by Dutch and British shipping lines, settled in the Binnen Bantammerstraat from the early 20th century. The Fo Guang Shan He Hua Temple at Zeedijk 106-118, built in traditional Chinese palace style to a design by Fred Greven, was completed in 2000.

5. 5Red Light Secrets Museum

   This museum about prostitution opened in February 2014 in a narrow canal house at Oudezijds Achterburgwal 60, a building that was once a brothel. The displays set out the history of the district and of the trade, with a reconstructed work room, a window seat looking onto the canal, and a wall of quotations from sex workers. Much of it deals with the period after 2000, the year the Dutch ban on brothels was lifted.

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   6Oude Kerk

   The Old Church is the oldest building in Amsterdam and was consecrated in 1306, on a site where a wooden chapel had stood before. Its floor is made up of about 2,500 gravestones, among them that of Saskia van Uylenburgh, Rembrandt's wife, who was buried here in 1642.

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   7Beurs van Berlage

   Hendrik Petrus Berlage built this exchange on the Damrak between 1898 and 1903, and its plain brick walls broke with the richly decorated styles of the time. Look for the 40-metre clock tower with inscriptions urging patience; today the building is used for concerts, exhibitions and events.

8. 8BODY WORLDS Amsterdam

   The permanent exhibition at Damrak 66 opened in August 2014 under the title The Happiness Project. It shows more than 200 anatomical specimens preserved by plastination, a method the anatomist Gunther von Hagens developed in 1977, in which the water and fat in tissue are replaced by a liquid polymer that is then hardened. The rooms set healthy organs beside diseased ones and link the workings of the body to research on well-being.

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   9National Monument on Dam Square

   The 22-metre white stone pillar on Dam Square was unveiled by Queen Juliana on 4 May 1956 in memory of the victims of the Second World War. It was designed by the architect J.J.P. Oud with the sculptor John Rädecker, and every year on 4 May the national Remembrance of the Dead is held here.

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    10Madame Tussauds Amsterdam

    Founded in 1970, the wax museum on Dam Square was the first Madame Tussauds outside the United Kingdom. Since 1991 it has occupied the upper floors of a former Peek & Cloppenburg department store from 1917, with figures ranging from the Dutch Golden Age to today's stars.

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    11Royal Palace Amsterdam

    The palace on Dam Square was built from 1648 as Amsterdam's town hall, designed by Jacob van Campen and resting on 13,659 wooden piles. Louis Napoleon turned it into a royal palace in 1808, and on the rear gable a 6-metre statue of Atlas carries the globe on his shoulders.

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    12De 9 Straatjes

    These short side streets cross the Singel, Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht between the Raadhuisstraat and the Leidsegracht, and were laid out when the canal ring was built in the 17th century. Names such as Huidenstraat (Hides Street) and Wolvenstraat recall the hide and fur trades once carried on here.

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    13Westerkerk

    The Westerkerk was designed by Hendrick de Keyser and built in 1620–1631, the largest church in the Netherlands built for Protestants. Its 87-metre tower, the tallest church tower in Amsterdam, carries the crown of Emperor Maximilian I, and Rembrandt was buried here in 1669 in a grave whose location is now lost.

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    14Anne Frank Monument

    On the Westermarkt, beside the Westerkerk, stands a statue of Anne Frank by the sculptor Mari Andriessen, unveiled in 1977 with her father Otto Frank present. The Westerkerk tower and its bells, which she could see and hear from her hiding place nearby, appear often in her diary.

15. 15Amsterdam Tulip MuseumFinish

    This small museum has occupied a canal house at Prinsengracht 116 in the Jordaan, across the water from the Anne Frank House, since 2004, and is run by three Dutch families of bulb growers. About 200 square metres of displays follow the tulip from the mountains of Central Asia to the court of the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and on to Dutch fields, including the speculation in bulbs that collapsed in 1637.