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Unusual Places to Visit in Amsterdam

The largest art museum in the Netherlands, Rijksmuseum is itself a history book. Now located in the borough of Amsterdam South at the Museum Square, this Dutch national museum was founded on November 19, back in the year 1798, but in The Hague. After two times of relocation within ten years, as well as a ten-year renovation, the current building of the Rijkmuseum, was opened to the public in 2013. Claimed to have a total collection of one million objects, owned by the Kingdom of the Netherlands, they are all pertinent to the Dutch art and history. The spectacular museum also houses the masterpieces by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Jacob van Ruisdael and Vermeer, the Dutch Golden Age painters. Some of the attractions of Rijksmuseum are the paintings of ‘Night Watch’ by Rembrandt and ‘The Milkmaid’ by Vermeer. Consisting of a tunnel entrance, a beautiful garden, a library and a restaurant -  the museum building has been a heritage site since 1970. Pertaining to its location, the museum is located at the Museumplein, just a few minutes away from the Van Gogh Museum, Moco Museum and Stedelijk Museum. After reopening in its current form, this 200 years old museum was the most visited museum in the country for two consecutive years, 2013 and 2014, with the footfall count touching 2.2 million and 2.47 million, respectively. Apart from the paintings and objects, another attraction of this place is the Rijksmuseum Research Library, which is a part of this museum. It is declared as the best as well as the largest art history research library in the country. The library has a huge collection of over 400,000 volumes. After the renovation, it was reconstructed as a classical reading room. The visitors are provided with access to an expanded collection of journals and books hosted by this library.

One of the most popular destinations in Amsterdam, the Anne Frank House, displays the hardship that Anne Frank, her family, and four other Jews went through during World War II. It lies on the Prinsengracht canal in central Amsterdam, Netherlands, and is famous as the building used by Anne Frank and her family to hide from Nazis during wartime. It is believed that they stayed there in the Secret Annex for more than two years. The Secret Annex was in the rear of the building and the entrance to the secret place was concealed by a movable bookcase. All of the eight occupants stayed there in constant fear and followed a restricted and well-planned schedule to keep themselves hidden from Nazis. Anne Frank penned down all her fears, experiences, and schedules in a diary that was gifted to her just a few weeks before the attacks started on Jews. On the fateful day of 4 August 1944, they were located and sent to various concentration camps. Anne's father, Mr. Otto Frank was the only survivor of them and decided to publish Anne Frank's wartime diary in 1947 in memory of his late daughter. This diary is now one of the most selling bestsellers worldwide. He maintained the building as a memorial until it was transformed into a museum in 1960. The Secret Annex was preserved as it is, and still has the belongings of Anne and other members hiding there. The museum has in-display all-important and authentic documents along with photographs, images and personal belongings of all those who stayed there or helped them in isolation. The biggest attractions of this museum are Anne’s original red and white diary and other notebooks that she wrote during her stay in secret annex.

Van Gogh Museum is a home where you can appreciate the biggest collection of artworks by Vincent Van Gogh. Here you will not only see the artwork but will also learn about the life and life stories of Vincent Van Gogh. In the entire history of western art, he was one of the widely famous artists. He was born on 30 March 1853 in the Brabant village of Zundert, he was the first child of Protestant minister Theodorus van Gogh and Anna Carbenuts. His journey started as a schoolboy, then to becoming a junior clerk at an art firm, a teacher after that, then onto selling books as a bookseller and a preacher at the end. Finally, at the age of 27 years, he decided to become an artist and change the history of art forever which ended in 1890.Vincent has always dreamed of establishing a community of artists in the South of France. From the beginning he was an artist known for his passion and powerful emotions through his artworks. Vincent got his inspiration from the Japanese printmaking which gave him a new way to look at the world. There was a low time during 1890 while Vincent’s life was falling apart because of personal issues and he finally decided to take his own life and shot himself in the chest on 29th July 1890.Van Gogh Museum holds a collection of Vincent’s famous paintings and drawings along with the work of his artist friends. As per Vincent, his paintings based on sunflowers were among the best of his artwork he has ever made. There is a huge collection of Japanese prints as well, as Vincent Van Goh was a dear admirer of Japanese prints. Even after a century of his death, Vincent’s paintings are still inspiring the coming generation of artists over the globe.