Museum of the Amsterdam School of architecture
One of the most expressionist apartment blocks in Amsterdam, located at the Spaarndammerplantsoen, is called Het Schip (The Ship). It has been built in the years 1911-1920 and was designed for the housing association Eigen Haard by the architect Michel de Klerk. It featured 120 low rent apartments and the public utility buildings as school, post office and a community house.
Today, the former post office of Het Schip houses the museum of the Amsterdam School style of architecture. In its permanent exhibition the museum shows the history and the finest examples of this unique style.
The ticket to the museum will also give you the admission to an interesting Amsterdam School apartment in another house, at the walking distance of 300 yards (ca 100m.). You will also have the opportunity to visit the famous decorative tower designed by de Klerk.
On the other side of the street the museum has a convenient lunch space (at Ostzaanstraat 28-30).
The whole area of Het Schip is an interesting quarter, largely in the Amsterdam School style, now extensively renovated. You may see how inhabitants of Amsterdam live in the districts less frequented by the tourists.
The feel
Unusual monument of the early twentieth century architecture and an opportunity to see an interesting well off the beaten tourist tracks in Amsterdam, still not far from the city centre.
A well documented multilanguage exhibition (in all basic European languages and Japanese) seems really a must for architecture lovers.
Amsterdamse School Museum Het Schip
Address:
Spaarndammerplantsoen 140
1013 XT Amsterdam
How to get there:
Take a bus 22 from the Central Station. The bus stop is in front of the Victoria Hotel on the other side of the street (canal side). Het Schip museum is at the last stop of the bus (Zaanstraat) – after ca. 10 minutes ride.
Opening hours:
Wednesdays to Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m. Also by appointment. Every hour: guided tour in the museum.
Admission: € 5,00; older people (+65): € 2,75; students € 2,00, with the Museum card: free
Tel. +31 20 4750924 or +31 20 418 2885
Web: http://www.hetschip.nl/
The museum also organizes guided tours of Amsterdam showing the highlights of the Amsterdam School style of architecture. Conference facility with the possibility of lunch or reception and a capacity of 50 participants is also available (please contact Alice Roegholt, tel. no. +31 20 418 2885).
The museum about the world of just one book – The Bible. The Biblical Museum (in Dutch: Bijbels Museum) is housed in the very heart of the old Amsterdam, at the Herengracht canal. An interesting historical museum exhibits objects from the Judeo-Christian tradition, history of the Bible and the influence of the Bible on the society and fine arts. 
The feel
foam.nl
Adjacent to the Royal Palace is Nieuwe Kerk, a church of the highest order. Akin to the Gothic churches of France, it was built circa 1400 due to the shortage of churches in the city and over the years, many changes have been made. The New Church remarkably managed to escape major damage in 1421 and 1452, the two great fires of Amsterdam, although two centuries later it was reduced to ashes when plumbers accidentally started a fire. The church however has been faithfully restored to its former glory, exhibiting the original early Renaissance style features throughout even though it remains tower-less.
Not far from the Chinese quarter of Amsterdam and right behind the Red Light District if you walk from the Dam square east, in a direct proximity of the Waterlooplein, the house stands which the famous Dutch painter Rembrandt owned and lived in, between 1639 and 1660. 
NEMO houses loads of experiments and exhibitions inside its giant green hull on Oosterdok. No matter your background you will learn something new and have fun while doing it. Attractions change regularly, check the homepage to get the latest word.
Situated in the fabulous Vondelpark, the Filmmuseum Amsterdam is the national centre for cinematography in the Netherlands. In its collection are over 35,000 film titles which, together, add up to more than 60,000,000 metres of film. The collection also comprises photos, posters, newspaper clippings, magazines and many other items relating to film history. 
The Willet-Holthuysen Museum houses a remarkable collection of fine and applied art acquired by Abraham Willet. Selections from the collection are shown in alternating exhibitions in the rooms on the first floor. Other exhibitions relating to the theme of the collection are also shown on the display.
This museum is one of Amsterdam hidden treasures. Located off city centre in a beautiful old building in East Amsterdam (Amsterdam Oost), Tropenmuseum often remains forgotten, like an old collection of post stamps. However, if you are interested in other cultures, other countries and distant lands - do no miss it. Tropenmuseum exhibit is modern, fascinating on many levels and inspiring. Moreover - a great museum to visit with kids, it is like a journey to all exotic. 
A visit to the Tropenmuseum starts on the second floor accessible with a big lift. The show is divided by continents. It begins with South America and through Africa reaches Asia and the Antilles on the first floor. Additionally, on the ground floor, there is an exhibition on Man & Environment and to the left from the entry Tropenmuseum Junior – a separate part of the museum dedicated for children, but aimed at mainly at Dutch schools, less at the young international guests. 
Each month the curators select few objects from the immense collection of the Tropenmuseum and present them in special way, telling the whole story behind it and tracing its route before it arrived at the museum’s collection. A special information card is given to visitors looking at these objects.
Adults and minors from age of 17 years - € 7,50; children and minors younger than 17 – € 4,-, family day ticket € 20,- , older people 65+ and students (ID required) € 6,-. Free entry with the Museumkaart. Audio tour in Dutch, English, French and German is free of charge; € 5,- reimbursable deposit for the headphones. The museum shop is selling interesting objects from other lands, as beautiful original African masks. The shop is accessible only with the entry ticket.
The Netherlands Maritime Museum is housed in the National Naval Depot which is a former arsenal of the Dutch Navy, over 300 years old. 
This managed by the Historical Museum of Amsterdam gallery of the old portaits of the wealhty citizens of Amsterdam, is free an easily accessible. You may enter it from the most busy commercial street – Kalverstraat, during your visit to the Amsterdam Historical Museum or from the quiet courtyard of Begijnhof. 
The feel:
The Allard Pierson Museum, part of the Department of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Amsterdam, houses a collection of Mediterranean antiquities and artefacts and is devoted to placing the sources of Western tradition and culture in an accessible historical perspective. 
Russian former capital - the city of Saint Petersburg, today one of the Europe’s largest cities, has been built by the tsar Peter the Great starting from 1703, after the tsar’s stay in Zaandam and Amsterdam during his grand trip to Western Europe (so called Great Embassy: 1697 - 1698). The city original name had been Sankt Petersburg. Known for years as Leningrad, today again the city name is of Dutch origin. But the Dutch element is not only in the city name: Saint Petersburg was also built with the help of the Dutch, since the area chosen for its foundation, was muddy and full of swamps. 
Hermitage Amsterdam organizes exhibitions on one selected theme, giving usually two showings each year. All the exhibited objects are transported from the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, first with a truck to Finland, and then shipped to North of Germany, to be again brought by truck to Amsterdam. After the exhibitions all the objects travel back to Russia. The museum is closed in short periods of the exposition change. 
Hermitage Amsterdam
A small, but very interesting because of its local, intense sphere, Museum Van Loon is in fact an impressive patrician house like many in the center of Amsterdam. This is your unique chance of entering such a house, still privately owned by the aristocratic Van Loon family, which about thirty years ago decided to open it to the public. There are still parts of the house which remain closed to the visitors and although its owners do not reside in the house, you may sometimes get a glimpse of their relatives or friends sneaking through the museum to their closed quarters. You will be allowed to visit the kitchen, the garden, wander through beautiful reception rooms, climb the stairs up to the private quarters on the first floor. Exhibition is presented in a way to give you the feeling that the owners have just left for a walk. Bread in the kitchen has dried out, true, may be even has been covered with a layer of plastic and paint, but you will get a rare chance of getting the feel of the Dutch life from inside. The china is on the table, sheets cover the beds, fine paintings look at you from the walls.
Museum Our Lord in the Attic (previously called Museum Amstelkring) is one of the most cherished museums in Amsterdam with a special atmosphere that surprises every visitor. 
At first you will experience the rich smell of roasted coffee and you will see the shop, which could have been standing here unchanged fifty or even eighty years ago. Since five generations the Geels family trades in coffee and tea. The company has been established in 1864, that is at the time when first coffee houses opened in Amsterdam. Still today, Mrs. Esther Geels remains involved in the company work. 
More a home collection of dusty bits and pieces, than a real museum - nevertheless the atmosphere of the whole shop and the museum is truly unique. Not to be missed, especially if you are a coffee aficionado.
Special guided tours of the museum may be organized for small groups of visitors. Contact the Geels & Co. shop for the information.
How to get there:
Everything about the Geelvinck Hinlopen House was designed and built to showcase the wealth and position of the owners Albert Geelvinck and Sara Hinlopen. The Geelvinck family were active in the East India and West India trading companies, and in1687, built this house as a family home suitable for entertaining business guests. 
Of the four rooms one is a library with deep leather chairs and a wonderfully decorated ceiling was revealed when the house was renovated and has been restored to its 19th century glory. Two others, the Red and Blue rooms were the drawing and dining room respectively, and have period paintings and furniture sourced from other houses. 
The Jewish Historical Museum is the only museum in the Netherlands to focus on Jewish history, religion and culture. The museum is located in a group of four historical Ashkenazi synagogues at the heart of the former Jewish quarter in the centre of Amsterdam.
Temporary exhibitions at the museum invariably connect in some way to Judaism. In recent years exhibitions have featured work by artists such as Andy Warhol, Jozef Israëls and Marc Chagall. Shows have also featured photography, for example by Sem Presser and Erwin Blumenfeld, as well as surveys of cultural history. And naturally, the children’s exhibition Where Mokum is Home is well worth a visit. Mokum is the Jewish name for Amsterdam. Children, and adults too, are introduced to different aspects of Jewish tradition through interactive presentations, including matzo baking and learning to write Hebrew letters.
When political correctness threatens with imposing a strict ban on smoking all over Amsterdam, this museum about the pleasures of smoking would seem like defiance. But in reality this is a scientifically systematic exhibit of more than 2 thousands pipes, organized chronologically from pre-Columbian pipes, through Indians of South and North America, ending with Western civilization – Europe an America since the end of 15th C. until today.
Today, the collection consists of 20 000 pipes, therefore only a fragment of it may be shown. The Pijpenkabinet has been recognized as a specialist historical collection, and its creators Don Duco and Benedict Goes, an authority in this field. And although smoking of tobacco is in serious retreat all over the Western World, the Pijpenkabinet grows and enlarges – last years it took over 15 collections from other institutions. 
If you are a pipe addict, or just a history buff – this beautiful museum is highly recommended. And… this is probably the only museum in the world, where you may still smoke pipe.
On a most busy spot of Amsterdam, in an old townhouse - a small, modern museum has been launched responding to the growing popularity of vodka in the world. What vodka has to do with Amsterdam? – You may ask. Not much more than with any other big city, but Vodka Museum sited close to the nightlife heart of Amsterdam is fun. 
You will find the Vodka Museum on Damrak, almost in front of the Central Station. The distance is walking – 2 minutes walk from the Central Station, 3 minutes walk from the Dam square.
In a modest patrician house at one of the small streets of Old Amsterdam centre, there is a museum dedicated to one of the most celebrated Dutch writers. Eduard Douwes Dekker, who took the penname Multatuli, was born here in 1820 as the fourth child of the Dutch ship captain. After him one more son was born in the family, so they had to move to a bogger lodging. Multatuli’s upbringing although patricians, was very modest, with father mostly at sea and mother taking care of children.
If you are interested in history, especially the history of the Netherlands, this museum will be a small, but intelligent addition.
This established at the end of the 18th C. medical collection of pathological specimens, anomalous embryos, odd skulls and bones is used until today by the Faculty of Medicine students of the University of Amsterdam. Called after the name of its originators, 18th and 19th century anatomy professors from Amsterdam, Museum Vrolik is today one of the few museums of its kind in the world. 
Today, the Museum Vrolik includes specimens from other collections, added through more than a century of its existance - the last addition of 150 specimens being as recent as in 1994. At present-day Museum Vrolik has not only a historical and didactical importance. The development of the molecular research gives the specimens of its collection scientific value, no lesser then in the times of its founders. 
Admission: free
The Kromhout shipyards history started on May 11, 1757, when wealthy Amsterdam lady named Neeltje Hendrikse de Vries, bought a piece of land for her husband shipbuilder Doede Jansen Kromhout on one of the former marshes, now drained into new islands near Amsterdam. 
Housed in a beautiful 19th C. wrought iron hall, which used to stand in Amsterdam where now the Concertgebouw building is located, and had been taken apart and moved here to create space for the famous concert hall, this old-fashioned engines collection smells sea water, oil and iron. It is fun to visit for every shipbuilding aficionado or a kid dreaming about distant sea travels. 
In one of the side streets between two canals of the lively old district Jordaan, below an art gallery in the style of 1970-ties, in a dark space of the cellar of one of the townhouses thousands of fluorescent stones shine. An obsession of one man – American artist Nick Padalino created here a small museum: named after the music album by Jimmy Hendrix from 1968 - Electric Ladyland or more formally - The Fluorescent Art Museum which is proud to be the first museum of its kind in the world, totally devoted to the fascination with fluorescence, moreover - making an art of it. 
To visit Electric Ladyland is like to travel into the aura of the Flower Power movement, the world of the psychedelic art and music of the 1970-ties. Take you iPod with you and just enjoy it listening to the music you like. The exhibit may look amateurish, but it works - Electric Ladyland is fantastic and genuinely interesting. We recommend it not only for the Flower Power generation. If you are interested in minerals or specifically in fluorescence – do not miss it.
Walking from Anne Frank House – 5 minutes; from Central Station - 20 minutes walk. From Central Station trams 13, 17 (stop Westermarkt), bus 170, 172 (stop Westermatkt); also tram 14 (stop Westermarkt) and tram 10 (exit on stop Bloemgracht).
Willem Bilderdijk (1756-1831) was one of the most interesting figures in the in the 19th century history of the Netherlands. A lawyer by education, only shortly worked as an attorney dedicating most of his active life to his studies, his writings and his teachings. Bilderdijk became an influential personage of the Dutch literature - a poet, writer, thinker, but also an important person for politics in the Netherlands, as a supporter of the constitutional monarchy of the dynasty of Orange.
The Bilderdijk Museum is more a large, well organized reading room, with a rich collection of memorabilia, than a real museum. Nevertheless, located in a modern university building collection surprises with is impressive care for a detail and with love of tradition. In our opinion this small museum is a must for the Dutch history and literature lover.
Bilderdijk Museum is located in a big modern building of the Amsterdam Free University (Vrije Universiteit - VU); room 1B-41/31; entry through the Department of Old Prints of the VU Library. The best is to enter through VU the main entry and go to the left to the wing B. You will find the Bilderdijk Museum on the second floor, behind the library.
