Amsterdam

Amsterdam’s UNESCO-listed canal ring (opens in a new tab) is a picture book come to life: 17th-century houses reflected in the water, bikes gliding over tiny bridges, and narrow canals threading through the historic center. Amsterdam was built around its canals, so seeing the city by boat is one of the best ways to see its architecture—⁠and understand why artists have painted it for more than 400 years.

Red-lit windows line the Oudezijds Achterburgwal and Oudezijds Voorburgwal and the alleys between them, including Trompettersteeg, which is barely a shoulder wide. Sex work is legal and regulated in the Netherlands, and the sex workers renting the windows are self-employed. Photographing them is prohibited.

NEMO’s ship-shaped copper building rises above the water beside Amsterdam Centraal and holds five floors of hands-on exhibits that cover physics, technology, and the human body. The first floor includes a soap bubble big enough to stand inside; on the fourth, “Humania” (⁠ages 12+⁠) tackles identity, sexuality, and death through physical tests and brainteasers.

This former working-class neighborhood is one of Amsterdam’s most popular places to duck into bruin cafés (⁠brown bars⁠) with waterside terraces, such as Café ’t Smalle (opens in a new tab). The more than 400-year-old Noordermarkt, open Saturdays and Mondays, mixes an organic farmers market with vintage finds and antiques.

A fully intact 17th-century Catholic church hidden across the upper floors of three adjoining canal houses. During the Reformation, Catholics were forbidden to worship publicly, so this improbably elaborate three-story chapel was built out of sight.

This 1656 naval storehouse on the eastern docks houses 500 years of Dutch maritime history. Its glass-and-steel canopy roof is based on ancient maritime maps. Inside, you’ll find charts, ship models, and paintings that came out of the trade. A full-size replica of the VOC ship Amsterdam is moored outside and open to board.

This is the actual canal house where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis for more than two years, and where Anne wrote much of her diary. You enter through a hinged bookcase built to hide the doorway. A map of Normandy still hangs on the wall, marked with pins her father, Otto Frank, used to track the Allied advance while hiding.

De Wallen holds Amsterdam’s medieval core and its Red-Light District—⁠the Oude Kerk was consecrated in 1306, and the window rooms operate in the surrounding lanes. Museum Our Lord in the Attic is a few streets north. Warmoesstraat and Zeedijk run through the middle, and the alleys between them are the oldest street pattern in the city.

Amsterdam’s oldest flea market, with vintage clothes, books, army surplus, vinyl, and all manner of random finds. Go on Saturday for the full crowd and haggling energy, or on a weekday if you’d rather browse without being elbow-to-elbow.