Rijksmuseum

About the Museum

The Rijksmuseum is the national museum of the Netherlands, a palace of red brick and stone towers designed by Pierre Cuypers and opened in 1885 at the edge of the Museumplein. It tells the story of Dutch art and history from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century through about eight thousand objects, and its heart is the Gallery of Honour, where the great paintings of the seventeenth century, the Dutch Golden Age, lead the visitor to Rembrandt's Night Watch at the far end.

The building is arranged chronologically. The ground floor and the lower level cover the years from 1100 to 1600 and the twentieth century, the first floor covers 1700 to 1900, and the second floor holds the seventeenth century, with the Gallery of Honour running through its middle. Around the paintings you find silver, furniture, ship models, dolls' houses, Delftware, weapons and costume, so that Vermeer hangs a few rooms from the cabinets and the sea charts of the people he painted. There is also an Asian Pavilion in the garden and a library that looks like something from a novel.

Give the museum at least three hours. Most visitors go straight to the second floor, and the Gallery of Honour is crowded from late morning, so either arrive at opening time and go there first, or leave it for the last hour of the day.

Before You Go

Book a timed ticket online; entry is through the passage that runs under the building, and the museum is busiest from eleven until three.

Go to the Gallery of Honour on the second floor first thing in the morning, or after four in the afternoon, when the Vermeers and the Night Watch can be seen without standing in a crowd.

The Night Watch is being conserved in a glass chamber in its own gallery; the painting stays on view, but the view may be partly obstructed by the conservators' equipment.

Photography without flash is allowed in the galleries, tripods and selfie sticks are not.

The free floor plan and the museum app suggest one hour, two hour and three hour routes; the first floor galleries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the ground floor Middle Ages are quiet even on busy days.

Large bags and umbrellas go in the free lockers in the atrium; the Cuypers Library on the second floor can be viewed from its balcony without a separate ticket.

The cycle path through the museum passage is a real cycle path, so look both ways when crossing it to reach the entrance.