Royal Palace of Amsterdam

What it is

The Royal Palace Amsterdam stands on the west side of Dam Square, opposite the National Monument and beside the Nieuwe Kerk. It was not built as a palace. Amsterdam commissioned it as a new town hall, Jacob van Campen took charge of the project in 1648, and the building was opened on 29 July 1655 by burgomaster Cornelis de Graeff. It rests on 13,659 wooden piles driven into the marsh, a figure Dutch schoolchildren still learn. It became royal only in 1808, when Louis Bonaparte, installed as King of Holland, moved his court from The Hague to Amsterdam and turned the town hall into his residence. He left behind the Empire furniture that the Palace says is still used at royal receptions. After Napoleon fell and the Kingdom of the Netherlands was founded in 1815 the building passed to the Dutch Royal House, and it is now one of three palaces placed at the monarch's disposal by Act of Parliament. Today it is King Willem-Alexander's official reception palace, used for state banquets, New Year's receptions and award ceremonies. Between those occasions it opens to visitors, and that is the thing to grasp before planning around it: this is a working state building lent to the public, not a museum with a fixed calendar.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What's inside

Almost every room on the main floor is open, together with the Tribunal on the ground floor, so the route is a single storey plus one flight. The centre of it is the Citizens' Hall, a vast marble room built to place Amsterdam at the middle of the universe, with the marble galleries running off it. From there the route takes in the Throne Room, the Balcony Chamber from which the Royal House appears to Dam Square, and the Mozes Hall. Paintings by Govert Flinck and Ferdinand Bol, both trained in Rembrandt's studio, hang in the public rooms alongside the sculptural decoration cut for the town hall, and Louis Bonaparte's Empire furniture stands in the rooms he furnished. Admission includes an audio tour, offered in Dutch, English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Mandarin; the device also shows the text in Dutch and English at a size the visitor can change. Two routes are published, a Royal Palace Tour of 75 minutes and a Palace Highlights Tour of 45 minutes, and there are separate children's tours from ages three, five and seven. A free booklet, Traces of Slavery, sits opposite the audio tour desk. Summer brings a changing exhibition; the rest of the Palace stays open during it.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

How long to spend

The Palace answers this itself: asked how much time a visit takes, its visitor information page says about an hour on average. Its own full audio route, the Royal Palace Tour, runs 75 minutes, and the shorter Palace Highlights Tour runs 45. This guide plans 75 minutes, which is the longer of the two operator figures and the one that matches walking the whole main floor with the audio tour rather than skipping through it. An hour is realistic only for the highlights route. Guided tours are booked in fixed slots of either 60 or 90 minutes, so a group booking sets its own length. Add time at either end. Tickets carry a date and a starting time, the cloakroom has to absorb anything larger than a small handbag, and the audio tour is issued at a desk that can queue when a tour group has just arrived. There is no café inside, so a visit is not extended by a coffee break — a stop for that means leaving the building, and Dam Square and the streets behind it are full of places. Ninety minutes from entering Dam Square to being back on it is a fair block to reserve in a day's plan.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Season and crowds

This is a Palace that plans around the King, not around a weekly rhythm, so there is no fixed closing day: when it is open, it is open seven days a week. The Palace states that in 2026 it opens for more than 230 days, daily from 10.00 to 18.00, but its own calendar is the authority and shows something narrower for the months ahead. Every listed day from 1 September to 25 October 2026 closes at 17.00, and December's listed days mostly close at 17.00 too. The calendar also shows whole blocks with no opening at all — 28 to 30 September, 5 October, and 26 October to 1 December 2026, with 25 December closed. The Palace explains the pattern: the building is closed to the public in the weeks before a state visit, because the whole house has to be made ready. Check the date on the calendar before committing to it. For the hour, the Palace's own accessibility page advises coming before 11.00 or after 15.00 to avoid crowds, and says weekdays outside Dutch school holidays are generally quieter.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Tickets

Adult admission is 13.50 euro and includes the audio tour. Students pay 9 euro, and anyone aged 17 and under enters free, audio tour included. The Dutch Museumkaart and an ICOM card both admit free; the I Amsterdam City Card is explicitly not valid here. A carer accompanying a visitor who could not manage the Palace alone enters free and needs no ticket, one carer per visitor. Tickets are sold online and at the ticket desk in the Palace, and the desk takes debit and credit cards only — no cash. Booking online means choosing a date and a starting time, which are printed on the ticket, and a single online order is capped at 15 tickets. Online tickets cannot be refunded, which matters given how the opening calendar moves. Groups of more than 15 are booked through the group page rather than the ordinary checkout. A guided tour led by one of the Palace's guides is priced per tour, not per head: 105 euro on weekdays and 135 euro at weekends, for a group from ten people upward, in Dutch or English. Museumkaart and ICOM tickets carry no barcode, which is normal — the card itself is scanned at the door.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Getting there

No car is needed and none is wanted. The Palace sits on Dam Square in the middle of the old centre, and the visitor entrance is on Dam Square at the right-hand side of the main facade. From Amsterdam Centraal it is a ten-minute walk: leave by the main entrance onto Stationsplein and go straight down the Damrak until the square opens up. By tram, every tram from Centraal towards the centre stops at Dam. By metro, line 52, the North/South line, runs from Centraal and from Amsterdam Zuid to Rokin, about 150 metres from the Palace by the Dam exit. Trams 2, 12, 13, 17 and 24 stop at the rear and side of the building and trams 4 and 14 at the front, which the Palace notes is the more workable stop for wheelchair users. Drivers use a paid garage and walk: Rokin, Centraal Station, De Bijenkorf, Nieuwendijk, Oosterdok or ParkBee Krasnapolsky are all within walking distance. Rokin, 150 metres away, is wheelchair accessible; Q-Park Nieuwendijk, 500 metres away, has four designated disabled bays. A general disabled parking space is on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal near number 140.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What to watch out for

The bag rule is the one that catches people arriving between trains. Only small hand bags up to 30 by 30 by 15 centimetres come inside. Anything bigger goes to the free cloakroom — except large backpacks and wheeled suitcases, which the Palace will not accept at all, so a traveller carrying one has to use a luggage locker elsewhere in the centre first. Umbrellas, scooter and motorcycle helmets, back-mounted child carriers and other large protruding objects are also barred from the rooms, though the cloakroom takes them. Wheelchairs, rollators, prams and walking sticks are allowed through. Animals are not, apart from assistance dogs on a lead and in a harness. The second trap is the calendar: the Palace closes for royal events, sometimes for weeks, and online tickets are not refundable, so buy for a date the calendar already shows as open rather than for a date that ought to be. Third, there is no café or coffee inside — plan to eat before or after. The ticket desk takes cards only. A wheelchair or a walking stick can be borrowed free, arranged in advance by email.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Photography

Photography for private use is allowed without flash. Filming and vlogging are not, and neither are tripods or selfie sticks; wedding photographs are specifically excluded. That leaves a hand-held camera in a building the Palace describes as having no bright lights and no loud sounds, with some rooms markedly darker than others. Plan for it: a fast lens or a high ISO setting does more good here than any accessory, and the marble is bright enough in the Citizens' Hall that a camera left on automatic will underexpose the room and lose the ceiling. The Citizens' Hall is the picture most visitors come away with, and its benches are the one place in the route where a photographer can brace an elbow instead of a tripod. The Tribunal on the ground floor is the darkest room on the route and the least forgiving. Outside, the Palace occupies the west side of Dam Square, so its main facade faces east and takes direct light in the morning; by late afternoon the front is in its own shadow and the square behind the photographer is at its most crowded. Early morning is the only time the facade is both lit and reasonably clear of people.

Checked 2026-08-26

Where it is

Nearby

External links

• View on Wikidata