The bicycle bell, two quick dings, not aggressive, just informative, is the sound of Amsterdam. It comes from behind you, it comes from the left, it comes from somewhere you cannot immediately identify, and within an hour of arriving you learn to step out of the cycle path without looking up from your phone. The city runs on two wheels, and the sooner you accept that you are a guest in the kingdom of the bicycle, the better your visit will be.

Seven Things That Earn Their Place on Your List

1. The Rijksmuseum, but do it in reverse. Everyone heads straight for The Night Watch. Walk through the Gallery of Honour backwards, start with the 19th-century Dutch paintings, then the 18th-century, working your way back to the Golden Age. By the time you reach Rembrandt’s colossal canvas (4.4 metres by 3.6 metres, completed in 1642, undergoing public restoration since 2019 in a specially built glass chamber that lets you watch conservators at work) you will understand what made it revolutionary: the light, the motion, the decision to paint a militia company mid-action rather than in a static row of faces. The museum opens at 9am; the 9.15am slot is blissfully empty.

2. The canal belt by water, but not the giant tour boats. The glass-topped canal cruises are fine. The small open boats, electric, silent, carrying 8-12 people, are better. Book a morning slot with Those Dam Boat Guys or Flagship Amsterdam (€22-28, 60-90 minutes). The guide usually knows which house was a secret Catholic church during the Reformation and which gable stone (the decorated plaques above doorways) means the building was a brewery. The canals, 165 of them, spanning over 100 kilometres, were dug in the 17th century as a defensive system and a transport network. They are also, improbably, three metres deep on average, with another metre of mud beneath that, plus an estimated 12,000-15,000 bicycles fished out annually by the city’s dredging barges.

3. The Anne Frank House, book two months ahead. Tickets are released online six weeks in advance, every Tuesday at 10am CET. They sell out within hours. Set a calendar reminder. The museum has not changed its format much since it opened in 1960, you walk through the secret annex, past the movable bookcase, into the rooms where eight people hid for 761 days, and the austerity is the point. The original diary is in a glass case. Anne’s height marks are still pencilled on the wall. No photograph can prepare you for the silence of the rooms.

4. De Negen Straatjes (The Nine Streets). The grid of shopping streets between the Prinsengracht and Singel, nine lanes of independent boutiques, vintage shops, cheesemongers, and cafés so small they seat six people. Skip the chain stores on Kalverstraat. The Nine Streets are where you will find a 1920s Dutch apothecary cabinet, a shop selling only olive oil (over 40 varieties, you can taste them all), and a bookshop, the American Book Center, housed in an Art Nouveau building with a ceiling of painted panels.

5. The A’DAM Lookout (and the swing). Take the free ferry from behind Centraal Station to Amsterdam-Noord. The A’DAM Tower has an observation deck (€16.50) and a swing, “Over the Edge”, that is the highest in Europe, dangling you 100 metres above the IJ river. It is a pure adrenaline gimmick, and it is brilliant. The view across the historic centre, with the canal rings radiating outward and the IJ waterway sparkling, is the best aerial perspective in the city.

6. A brown café, the older, the better. “Brown café” (bruin café) refers to the nicotine-stained walls, not the beer. Café Hoppe on Spui has been pouring since 1670; the wooden floor is rutted from centuries of boots, the bar is held together by tradition and inertia, and the bitterballen (deep-fried beef ragout balls, served with mustard) are the platonic ideal of drinking food. Café ‘t Smalle in the Jordaan has a waterside terrace that seats twenty and fills by 5pm on any sunny day. Go at 2pm on a Tuesday, order a jenever (Dutch gin, served in a tulip glass filled to the absolute brim), and watch the boats drift past.

7. Van Gogh Museum, the self-portraits, not the sunflowers. Everyone congregates around Sunflowers. Walk instead to the self-portrait room on the third floor. Van Gogh painted 36 self-portraits between 1886 and 1889 because he could not afford models; each one is a document of his changing mental state, and seen together, the brushstrokes growing tighter, the colours more frantic, they form a visual diary more intimate than any of his letters. The museum holds 200 paintings and 500 drawings, the largest Van Gogh collection in the world. The purpose-built building by Gerrit Rietveld (1973) is itself a masterclass in natural lighting.