Anne Frank House

What it is

The Anne Frank House is the canal house at Prinsengracht 263-267 in central Amsterdam where Anne Frank and seven other people hid from July 1942 until their arrest, and where she wrote the diary. The building had housed Otto Frank's business, and it was made of two parts: the main house at the front, where the firm carried on trading, and the annex behind it, on whose upper floors the eight people lived concealed. The Frank family went into hiding on 6 July 1942 and were later joined by the Van Pels family and by Fritz Pfeffer. Otto Frank was the only one of the eight to return from Auschwitz, in June 1945, and he found the annex empty and stripped. The museum opened in 1960, and at Otto Frank's own request the annex was left unfurnished; that emptiness is deliberate and is what most visitors remember. Around the historic rooms a modern wing now holds a temporary exhibition, scale models of the annex, a cafe and a shop. The museum's own description of the atmosphere inside is authentic and subdued, and the visit is built from quotations, photographs, film and original objects rather than from reconstruction. The entrance is not on the canal but around the corner at Westermarkt 20.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What's inside

The route runs through the working part of the front house and then through the hinged bookcase that Mr Voskuijl built to hide the annex door, which Anne described in her diary on 21 August 1942. Behind it are the rooms themselves: the space Anne shared with Fritz Pfeffer, still carrying the picture wall she pasted up from her collection of postcards and film stars; the pencil marks on a bedroom wall where Otto and Edith Frank measured their daughters, Margot gaining one centimetre in two years and Anne over thirteen; and the map on which Otto Frank tracked the Allied advance through Normandy. The diary room holds the original red-checked diary Anne was given for her thirteenth birthday on 12 June 1942, together with the notebooks she continued in. From March 1944 she rewrote the whole diary on 215 loose sheets after hearing that wartime diaries would be collected, and those sheets are shown in rotation rather than all at once, alongside her Favourite Quotes Book and her Tales Book of invented stories. The temporary exhibition currently running is 'Who's gone?' - The Jewish Lyceum 1941-1943, which follows the school Anne attended through the two years of its existence. An audio tour is included and is treated as part of the visit, in nine languages: Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

How long to spend

The museum says that on average a visit takes an hour, and that is the figure recorded on this page. Only the start of the visit is fixed: the ticket carries a time slot, and once inside a visitor may take as long as they want. Nothing pushes anyone through, and the museum publishes no closing-in warning or last-admission time on its ticket page, so the practical limit is the 22:00 closing rather than any stated maximum stay. An hour is realistic for the route as built. It is one house, walked in a single direction, and the reading is dense rather than long: quotations on the walls, short films, a handful of original objects that reward standing still. Visitors who listen to the whole audio tour and stop at the temporary exhibition on the way out will spend closer to ninety minutes, and that is this guide's judgement rather than a published figure. Add time either side. The cloakroom, the queue at the entrance and the cafe afterwards are not part of the hour, and the museum asks ticket holders to arrive at the time on the ticket rather than before it. If an introductory programme is booked, it runs for thirty minutes and happens before the museum visit itself; the educational programme for school classes runs two hours and fifteen minutes including the visit.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Season and crowds

The museum opens daily from 09:00 to 22:00, which is a longer day than almost any other museum in Amsterdam keeps and is the single most useful thing to know when planning around it. There is no weekly closing day and no midday break. The long evening means a slot can be fitted after other sites have shut, and late slots tend to be calmer than mid-morning ones, though the museum publishes no visitor figures by hour and that is an editorial judgement rather than a recorded fact. What governs the visit is not the hours but the release of tickets. All tickets become available every Tuesday at 10:00 CEST for a visit six weeks later, and the museum states plainly that demand exceeds the number of tickets and that they sell out very fast. A date shown as sold out is sold out; there is no sales desk at the museum. The published exceptions to the daily hours are: 1 January 12:00-22:00; 27 April, King's Day, 09:00-17:00; 4 May 09:00-17:00; 20 September 2026 09:00-17:00; 21 September 2026, Yom Kippur, closed; 22, 23 and 24 September 2026 closed; 7 November 2026 09:00-18:30; 25 December 09:00-17:00; and 31 December 09:00-17:00.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Tickets

A ticket is 16.50 euro for an adult, 7.00 euro for a visitor aged 10 to 17 and 1.00 euro for a child aged 0 to 9, each of those prices including a 1.00 euro booking fee. A Dutch Museumkaart, whether the physical pass or the digital one in the app, and an ICOM card each pay the 1.00 euro booking fee only. A European Youth Card pays 7.00 euro. The I amsterdam Card and student cards carry no discount at all, which catches people out. Tickets are sold only through the museum's own website, only for a named date and time slot, and never at the door - that applies to the one-euro children's tickets and to discount-card holders as well, who still have to reserve. Payment in the museum, in the cafe and in the shop is by bank or credit card only; no cash is taken. Tickets cannot be exchanged or refunded, and the museum says this holds even for circumstances beyond the visitor's control such as transport failure or a changed travel advisory. They are non-transferable and valid only at the printed date and time. One point on the museum's own pages does not agree with itself: the practical information page states a minimum age of 10 and says the museum is not suitable for younger children, while the ticket page sells a 0-9 ticket at 1.00 euro.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Getting there

The museum stands at Prinsengracht 263-267 but the visitor entrance is around the corner at Westermarkt 20, 1016 DK Amsterdam, beside the Westerkerk. No car is needed, and arriving by one is the harder option in a canal district with almost no street parking. From Amsterdam Centraal it is a twenty-minute walk; from Dam Square it is ten. Two of the museum's own pages disagree about the tram, and both are reproduced here rather than blended: the ticket page says to take tram 13 or 17 and get off at Westermarkt, while the practical information page says that from 15 February 2025 until February 2028 no tram runs as far as the Westermarkt stop and that trams run to Dam Square instead, from where it is a ten-minute walk. The later-dated works notice is the safer assumption, so plan on Dam Square and the walk. For drivers the museum names IJDock and Q-Park Europarking as the nearest car parks. For visitors with a mobility disability there is one publicly accessible parking space forty metres from the entrance on the Westermarkt itself, and two more near Keizersgracht 220, a further three hundred metres from the door.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What to watch out for

The stairs are the real obstacle and the museum documents them precisely: three steep staircases going up, three ordinary ones coming down, two small flights, and one high step. That step is the bookcase itself, 39 centimetres high and 41 wide, and it is the hardest movement of the visit. Two of the upward flights have a handrail on one side only. The historic house is therefore not accessible by wheelchair or other mobility aid; the modern part, holding the temporary exhibition, the scale models, the cafe and the shop, is partly accessible by lift with a staff member's help through a separate entrance. Seating exists only at the start and the end of the route, and a portable stool can be asked for at the information desk. Luggage is the other trap. Only bags smaller than an A4 sheet may be carried through the museum. There is a free cloakroom for a coat, a small bag or a buggy, but it has no room for large backpacks, suitcases or bulky items, and the museum warns that a visitor arriving with them may not get in at all. Leave them at the hotel or at the drop and go at Amsterdam Centraal. Bring a card rather than cash, and arrive at the time on the ticket.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Photography

There is no photography inside the Anne Frank House at all. The museum forbids photographing and filming anywhere in the building, both to protect the original items and to keep visitors from disturbing one another, and it names smart glasses, camera glasses and AI glasses under the same rule. The ban is not a flash restriction or a gallery-by-gallery matter, so there is nothing to check as the route goes on: the phone stays in a pocket for the whole hour, which is part of why the rooms stay quiet. Plan the pictures for outside. The canal facade of Prinsengracht 263 reads best from the far bank or from the bridge just west of the house, where the whole terrace and the water can be held in one frame, and the Westerkerk tower rises directly behind the entrance on the Westermarkt. The canal-side front catches the light earlier in the day and sits in its own shadow by late afternoon, when the tower makes the better subject. Those are practical observations rather than published guidance. The queue on the Westermarkt is part of the scene most days, and photographing people standing in it is worth a moment's thought.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Where it is

Nearby

External links

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