Rijksmuseum

The national museum of the Netherlands opened in 1885 in a Pierre Cuypers building that blends Gothic and Renaissance, and reopened in 2013 after a ten-year renovation. Its collection spans eight centuries of Dutch art and history, but most visitors head for the Gallery of Honour and its Golden Age masters: Rembrandt, Vermeer, Frans Hals and Jan Steen.

The Night Watch hangs at the end of the gallery. Since 2019 it has been restored inside a glass room, so you see the painting and the conservators at work at the same time. Save time for Vermeer's The Milkmaid, the 17th-century dolls' houses and the library, one of the most photographed rooms in the building.