Rijksmuseum

The national museum of the Netherlands, and the Gallery of Honour is the reason to come. The long corridor of Golden Age masterpieces leads to Rembrandt's Night Watch at the far end, restored and rehung in 2023 in its own dedicated room with controlled lighting. Vermeer's Milkmaid and The Little Street are here too. The building itself, a Pierre Cuypers cathedral of art from 1885, is worth the visit for the architecture alone. The bike tunnel running through the building is pure Amsterdam.

The collection spans 800 years, from medieval religious art through the Dutch Golden Age to 20th-century design, but the second floor is where you'll spend most of your time. The Vermeer room groups several paintings together, and after the 2023 exhibition that reunited nearly every Vermeer on earth, they've kept the improved display. The Delftware collection on the ground floor is unexpectedly fascinating, blue-and-white pottery telling the story of Dutch trade with China and Japan.

Budget at least three hours. The museum is enormous (80 galleries, 8,000 objects on display) and trying to see everything in one visit will exhaust you. Instead, pick two or three periods that interest you and go deep. The Rijksmuseum gardens are free to enter and hide several sculptures and a nice cafe. The library reading room on the first floor, with its spiral staircase and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, is one of the most photographed rooms in the Netherlands and completely free to walk into.