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Travel destinations Comments: 0 Apr 07, 2017

Amsterdam is the capital and most populous municipality of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Amsterdam's name derives from Amstelredamme, indicative of the city's origin around a dam in the river Amstel. The city is located in the province of North Holland in the west of the country. The metropolitan area comprises much of the northern part of the Randstad, one of the larger conurbations in Europe, with a population of approximately 7 million.

The city lies on more than 150 channels that are associated with nearly 1,300 bridges, so many people often compared it with Venice. Therefore, the Amsterdam is best seen from one of the tourist boats that will take you through three main channels. The mainland part of Amsterdam is best visited on foot, or join the local people on bikes, which Amsterdam has more than half a million.

Famous Amsterdam residents include the diarist Anne Frank, artists Rembrandt van Rijn and Vincent van Gogh, and philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Amsterdam's main attractions, including its historic canals, the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, Stedelijk Museum, Hermitage Amsterdam, Anne Frank House, Amsterdam Museum, its red-light district, and its many cannabis coffee shops draw more than 5 million international visitors annually.

Rijksmuseum

The Rijksmuseum is a Dutch national museum dedicated to arts and history in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the Concertgebouw. The Rijksmuseum was founded in The Hague in 1800 and moved to Amsterdam in 1808, where it was first located in the Royal Palace and later in the Trippenhuis. The current main building was designed by Pierre Cuypers and first opened its doors in 1885. In 2013 and 2014, it was the most visited museum in the Netherlands with record numbers of 2.2 million and 2.47 million visitors. It is also the largest art museum in the country.

Van Gogh Museum

The Van Gogh Museum is an art museum dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It is located at the Museum Square in the borough Amsterdam South, close to the Stedelijk Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and the Concertgebouw.The museum opened on 2 June 1973. It is located in buildings designed by Gerrit Rietveld and Kisho Kurokawa. The museum's collection is the largest collection of Van Gogh's paintings and drawings in the world. In 2015, the museum had 1.9 million visitors, and was the 2nd most visited museum in the Netherlands and the 31st most visited art museum in the world.

Rembrandt House Museum

The Rembrandt House Museum is a historic house and art museum in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Painter Rembrandt lived and worked in the house between 1639 and 1656. The 17th-century interior has been reconstructed. The collection contains Rembrandt's etchings and paintings of his contemporaries. The museum had 237,383 visitors in 2014.

Anne Frank House

The Anne Frank House is a writer's house and biographical museum dedicated to Jewish wartime diarist Anne Frank. The building is located on a canal called the Prinsengracht, close to the Westerkerk, in central Amsterdam in the Netherlands. During World War II, Anne Frank hid from Nazi persecution with her family and four other people in hidden rooms at the rear of the 17th-century canal house, known as the Secret Annex. Anne Frank did not survive the war, but in 1947 her wartime diary was published. In 1957, the Anne Frank Foundation was established to protect the property from developers who wanted to demolish the block. The museum opened on 3 May 1960. It preserves the hiding place, has a permanent exhibition on the life and times of Anne Frank, and has an exhibition space about all forms of persecution and discrimination.

Madame Tussauds

Madame Tussauds is a wax museum which is located in Amsterdam and also in London, Berlin, Shanghai, Hong Kong, New York, Las Vegas and Washington. Madame Tussauds Wax Museum is now one of the biggest tourist attractions of the city, and in it you can see waxworks of historical and royal figures, film, music and sports stars and the famous murderers.

De Wallen

De Wallen is the largest and best known red-light district in Amsterdam. It consists of a network of alleys containing approximately three hundred one-room cabins rented by prostitutes who offer their sexual services from behind a window or glass door, typically illuminated with red lights. These "kamers" are the most visible and typical kind of red light district sex work in Amsterdam and are a large tourist attraction. The area also has a number of sex shops, sex theatres, peep shows, a sex museum, a cannabis museum, and a number of coffee shops that sell marijuana.

Heineken Experience

No visit to Amsterdam is incomplete without taking a peek in the breweries that produced perhaps the world's best beer. The Heineken Experience, is a historic brewery and corporate visitor center for the internationally distributed Dutch pilsner, Heineken beer.The industrial facility was built as the first Heineken brewery in 1867, serving as the company's primary brewing facility until 1988 when a more modern, larger facility was constructed on the outskirts of the city.