Rijksmuseum

What it is

The Rijksmuseum is the national museum of the Netherlands, at Museumstraat 1 on the south side of Amsterdam's Museumplein, immediately next to the Van Gogh Museum. It puts roughly 8,000 objects on permanent display and uses them to tell 800 years of Dutch art and history, from the Middle Ages through to Mondrian. The building is as much of the visit as the collection: Pierre Cuypers designed it as a deliberate combination of Gothic and Renaissance forms, and it opened officially in 1885. Cuypers laid it out around a central spine, the Gallery of Honour, which runs towards a single focal point, the Night Watch Gallery, and the museum still works that way. Two parts of the site cost nothing and are worth knowing about before you buy anything. A public passage runs straight through the building at ground level, used by cyclists and pedestrians as a through route, with glass walls that look into the interior courtyards. And the gardens that wrap around the museum are free to enter. The ticketed museum is what lies inside the two wings above and beside them, reached from the Atrium under the passage.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What's inside

The Gallery of Honour is the spine of the second floor: an extended corridor with masterpieces of the seventeenth century set into side alcoves, cast-iron beams inscribed with the names of the painters of the age, and the coats of arms of the eleven provinces and their capitals above. At its end is the Night Watch Gallery. Rembrandt's painting is currently inside a purpose-built glass chamber for Operation Night Watch, the research and restoration project that began in 2019 and is carried out in front of visitors; the 1975 wooden stretcher was replaced with an aluminium one in 2022, and since the end of 2024 the restorers have been taking off old varnish, so growing sections of the canvas look temporarily matt and dull. Around that spine, Vermeer's Milkmaid, Frans Hals, Jan Steen's Merry Family, Jan Asselijn's Threatened Swan and Rembrandt's portrait of Marten Soolmans. Four Van Gogh paintings, including a self-portrait, hang in the nineteenth-century rooms. Other floors run 1100 to 1600, 1700 to 1800 and 1900 to 2000, alongside Special Collections. The Asian Pavilion, by Cruz and Ortiz in Portuguese sandstone and glass and surrounded by water, holds work from China, Japan, Indonesia, India, Vietnam and Thailand spanning 2000 BC to 2000 AD. The Philips Wing carries temporary exhibitions, and the Cuypers Library, the Great Hall and the Teekenschool are open on the way round.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

How long to spend

The museum does not publish a recommended visit length, but it gives two useful markers. Its own advice to visitors who are short of time is that the highlights can be seen in about an hour, and the guided highlights tour it runs daily, The Best of the Rijksmuseum, is timetabled at one hour and costs 7.50 euro per person on top of admission, for ages sixteen and over. Take those as the floor rather than the target. An hour covers the Gallery of Honour and the Night Watch and nothing else. Two and a half hours is a realistic figure for the Gallery of Honour plus one other period floor at a walking pace, and that is the duration this guide plans against. Four hours or more is needed if you intend to add the Asian Pavilion, Special Collections and a temporary exhibition in the Philips Wing. The ticket helps here: the time you book is a start time only, and once you are inside you may stay until closing. What it does not allow is leaving and coming back, so a lunch break has to happen inside the building or at the end of the visit.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Season and crowds

The Rijksmuseum opens every day of the year from 09:00 to 17:00, including all public holidays. There is no weekly closing day, and there is no midday break. On crowding the museum is specific: it is usually quieter before 11:00 and after 15:30, and the relatively quiet days are Tuesday and Wednesday. Combining those, a start time at 09:00 on a Tuesday or Wednesday is the calmest slot the schedule offers, and it also puts you in the Gallery of Honour before the first tour groups reach it. A mid-afternoon start works too, but a start time close to 17:00 buys very little, because closing is at 17:00 whatever time you began. The Shop and The Café keep different hours, 09:00 to 18:00; they need a museum ticket until 17:00 and are open to anyone without one between 17:00 and 18:00, which is a way to see part of the building for free. The gardens run 09:00 to 18:00, and the museum's own opening-hours page adds that the green gardens are only open during summer.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Tickets

Admission is 25 euro for an adult and free for anyone aged eighteen or under. It is also free for Friends of the Rijksmuseum and for holders of the Museumkaart, the I amsterdam City Card, ICOM, the Amsterdamse Stadspas, Vereniging Rembrandt, KOG, VVAK and the VriendenLoterij VIP-KAART. CJP and EYCA members pay half price, and here the museum's own pages disagree: the opening hours and prices page gives 11.25 euro, while the visitor FAQ gives 12.50 euro. Both figures are printed here rather than averaged. Booking a start time is required for everyone, Museumkaart holders included; only Friends and holders of an ICOM or ICOMOS pass may arrive without booking, and their pass is checked at the entrance. The two pages also differ on buying at the door: the FAQ says official tickets are only available online, while the opening hours page says a limited number are sold at the museum entrance while stocks last. Paid tickets are not refundable, though the date and start time can be changed free of charge if you ask at least 48 hours ahead, and tickets are not tied to a name. A temporary exhibition needs its own separate start time, free with a valid ticket.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Getting there

The address is Museumstraat 1, 1071 XX Amsterdam, telephone +31 20 6747 000. No car is needed and the museum advises against one, pointing to high parking fees and heavy traffic in the centre. Public transport is what it recommends. Metro line 52 runs from Amsterdam Zuid or Centraal Station to Vijzelgracht, which is under a ten-minute walk away, and several tram lines stop close by from Amsterdam Zuid, Centraal Station and Amsterdam Amstel. On foot the museum is about ten minutes from the canal ring and the shopping streets, next door to the Van Gogh Museum and roughly twenty minutes from the Anne Frank House. If you do drive, the nearest option the museum names is the Q-Park Museumplein car park at Van Baerlestraat 33b, with accessible bays nearby; cheaper Park and Ride sites sit further out, with P+R ArenA connecting by metro to Weesperplein and then tram 7 to Spiegelgracht, and P+R Zeeburg by tram 26 to Rietlandpark and then tram 7. Coach drivers should check the City of Amsterdam's own rules. Cyclists can ride the passage under the building, and the museum is wheelchair and mobility-scooter accessible with lifts on all floors.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What to watch out for

The bag rule catches people out. Only handbags up to A4 size may be carried into the galleries; backpacks and oversized handbags are not allowed, and umbrellas and larger bags go into the free supervised cloakroom. The cloakroom has no facilities for travel luggage, large bags, folding bikes, musical instruments or skateboards, so anyone arriving straight from a station has to use the Lockerpoint on Museumplein first. If you need to bring a bag in for medical reasons, the information desk issues a label for security. The start time is a hard edge: the museum states plainly that if you are late for it, it cannot help you. There is no re-entry either, so once you are out you are out. Everything inside is cashless, in the shops and the catering outlets alike, so bring a card rather than notes. A ticket booked for the permanent collection does not admit you to a temporary exhibition; that needs its own free start time booked separately. And set expectations for The Night Watch before you stand in front of it, because varnish removal leaves parts of the surface looking flat and dull while the work continues.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Photography

Photography is allowed inside for visitors, with two conditions the museum states directly: no flash, and consideration for the people around you. Sketching is allowed too, in pencil and on paper only. What the museum's English visitor pages do not say is anything about tripods, monopods or commercial and press shoots, so if you need any of those, ask the information desk or the press office rather than assuming. In practice the hard subject is The Night Watch, because the glass chamber built for Operation Night Watch reflects the gallery lights and the crowd behind you; stand off to one side and shoot at an angle rather than square on, and expect the matt patches left by varnish removal to read oddly against the varnished areas. The Gallery of Honour photographs best from its far end, where the alcoves and the inscribed cast-iron beams line up into the Night Watch Gallery. The Atrium and the glass-walled passage give clean architectural frames without any crowd, and both are reachable without a ticket. For the exterior, the Museumplein lawn takes in the whole Cuypers facade, and the free gardens give the quieter three-quarter view.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Where it is

Nearby

External links

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