Your day of adventure begins outside a cafe on the Museumplein, one of the most vibrant places in central Amsterdam. You’ll have a chance to meet your guide and receive a briefing on the area. Be sure to share your particular interests with your expert to help inform the narrative for your tour. You’ll kick off your walk at the incredible Rijksmuseum (with skip-the-line tickets). Your expert will lay the foundation for understanding Dutch art history as you spend several hours in front of incredible masterpieces by the greatest Dutch artists.

You will continue your walk exploring the main sites of Amsterdam’s Old Town, including Dam Square and the Royal Palace, with other notable stops on the way.  Your expert will guide you through the history of this forward-thinking and artistic city, as you take in the beauty of the canals and charming local neighborhoods. After a morning filled with art, history, and architectural sites, we will stop for lunch at a local restaurant or cafe (at your own expense). 

After lunch, you will move to one of the main attractions of Amsterdam: the canals. Getting on a luxurious saloon boat, you will spend an hour and a half floating down the historical waterways, enjoying the sights of the city from a unique vantage point. This is the perfect background for your expert to discuss the history of the grand canal houses, as well as how Amsterdam evolved from a fishing village to a major European capital. 

At the end of this fun and historical day visiting some of the city’s main sites and museums, you’ll emerge with a deeper understanding of the historic, cultural, and artistic identity of the Dutch. 

Interested in exploring more of this beautiful city? Check out our Van Gogh Museum Tour or our Savoring Amsterdam: Brews & Bites Tour. 

Start your learning journey before you go with our online seminars about the Netherlands.

For more information about Context tours, please visit our FAQs.

Book with confidence — see Context's flexible cancellation policy here.

 

The Rijksmuseum becomes very crowded throughout the day. We strongly recommend a 9:00 am start time, but we can certainly accommodate requests for other times.

 

It may be, but we don’t recommend it. Our proposed routes are easily walkable and Amsterdam’s city center is compact. Some areas of the city center are closed to car traffic, as well. If you do need a car service, please let us know at the time of booking.

 

You will spend one and a half hours on the boat.

 

No. We will purchase tickets on your behalf and your expert guide will have the advance tickets ready for you. If you are planning on purchasing a museum pass or tickets on your own, please let us know in your client notes and we will remove these from your order.

 

You will need to cover the cost of lunch.

The tour visits the Rijksmuseum's permanent collection. Your entry tickets are valid for temporary exhibitions as well, but often, it is necessary to separately book time slots for visiting the exhibition(s). If you would like to include a particular temporary exhibition, we can usually do so on a custom basis. Please get in touch with us for more information and updated pricing.

 

Due to space limitations, we do not go inside Anne Frank House on any of our tours. Indeed, for this reason, the museum itself does not provide guided tours. Instead, they have an excellent self-guided exhibition which we highly recommend you explore independently. IMPORTANT: you should purchase timed tickets in advance to avoid potentially long queues. This can be done here, as soon as possible (tickets sell out up to several months in advance). We recommend our Jews in Amsterdam tour as a precursor to visiting the Anne Frank House, to gather historic context.