The Rijksmuseum is one of the great national museums — not for its size but for the quality of attention it brings to the Golden Age collection. The Rembrandt rooms and the Night Watch gallery have the particular weight of works that have been important for three centuries. The building itself is P.J.H. Cuypers' 1885 commission: a neo-Gothic and Renaissance hybrid that rewards the approach from the south through the Vondelpark corridor. The passage through the building at ground level is public and free. The museum is best mid-morning on a weekday, before the guided tour groups arrive at the principal works. The collection of Delft ceramics, the ship models, and the upper galleries of Dutch furniture are consistently quieter than the main Rembrandts.
Oud-Zuid, Amsterdam, Netherlands