Netherlands Guide
Amsterdam
The Rijksmuseum
Opening time: Daily 9am–6pm, Fri until 10pm
Price: €10, combined ticket with Van Gogh Museum, including current exhibition, €25
Website: www.rijksmuseum.nl
Address: Entrance on Jan Luijkenstraat
The Rijksmuseum is without question the country's foremost museum, with an extravagant collection of Dutch art, as well as a vast hoard of applied art and sculpture. An ongoing renovation has confined the collection to the Philips Wing but the selection on display is superb. There are paintings bv Rembrandt's pupils – Ferdinand Bol, Gerard Dou and Gabriel Metsu; several wonderful canvases by Frans Hals, such as his scatological Merry Drinker; the cool interiors of Vermeer, Gerard ter Borch and Pieter de Hooch; soft, tonal river scenes by the Haarlem artist Salomon van Ruysdael and by Albert Cuyp; the cool church interiors of Pieter Saenredam; and the popular carousing peasants of Jan Steen. However, it's the Rembrandts that steal the show, especially The Night Watch of 1642 – perhaps the most famous and probably the most valuable of all the artist's pictures – plus other key works, like a late Self-Portrait, a touching depiction of his cowled son, Titus, the arresting Staalmeesters and The Jewish Bride, one of his very last pictures, finished in 1667.