Not to miss

Rijksmuseum

If you've only got time to visit one museum, Amsterdam's answer to the Louvre is it. Even with most of its rooms closed for a lengthy renovation (scheduled for completion in 2008), the Rijksmuseum still offers a stunning feast for art lovers, with 17th-century masterpieces, silverware, Delft pottery and icons of Dutch history to be admired.

Anne Frank Huis

More than 80,000 people a year cram into Amsterdam's most famous canal house and, with precious little space for visitors, it might rank among the lowlights if not for its towering subject matter: the ordeal of a young girl who documented the horrors of WWII like no one else did. Expect long queues and lengthy delays, particularly in the middle of the day.

Anne Frank received a diary for her 13th birthday, three weeks before she went into hiding, and the attic in which she wrote that diary is the focus of this moving, often upsetting place.

By July 1942 the Germans were tightening the noose around the neck of Amsterdam's Jewish population and Anne (13) and her sister Margot (16), along with their parents, went into hiding in the family's business premises. They survived there, hidden in the attic, until betrayed to the Germans in August 1944 - a date tantalisingly close to the capitulation and defeat of the Third Reich. No one knows who betrayed them.

The Franks were among the last Jews to be deported. Anne died in the Bergen concentration camp a few weeks before liberation. Otto, Anne's father, was the only surviving family member.

Van Gogh Museum

Art lovers should brave the crowds to view the treasures of the Van Gogh Museum, which holds many of the artist's most famous works. Five hundred drawings, 200 paintings and over 700 letters make up the collection. Any visit to this museum brings the genius and vision of this tortured artist to life.

From the dour lumpen-life of The Potato Eaters to the bright, childlike colours of The Yellow House in Arles and the sombre beauty of Starry Night, the Van Gogh museum has curated the strongest ever showing of the artist's works. Born in 1853, Van Gogh had a short but amazingly productive life. He didn't begin painting until he was 28 years old, and produced most of his work in the last four years of his life, spent in France. Already predisposed to mental anguish, a virulent argument with his friend the painter Gaugin tipped him over the edge and caused him to cut off his ear. This self-mutilation was only the beginning of a steep spiral into madness, exacerbated by (as some have suggested) tertiary syphilllis. In 1890 he died by shooting himself in the head to escape institutionalisation.