Immediately south of Leidseplein begins the Vondelpark ,
the city's most enticing park, named after the seventeenth-century
Dutch poet Joost van der Vondel and a regular forum for drama and
other performance arts on summer weekends, when young Amsterdam
flocks here to meet friends, laze by the lake and listen to music;
in June, July and August there are free concerts every Sunday at
2pm. Southeast of the park is one of Amsterdam's better-heeled
residential districts, with designer shops and delis along chic
P.C. Hooftstraat and Van Baerlestraat and some of the
city's major museums grouped around the grassy wedge of
Museumplein .
The Rijksmuseum , Stadhouderskade 42 (daily 10am-5pm;
€6.80; www.rijksmuseum.nl ), is the one museum you shouldn't
leave Amsterdam without visiting, with fine collections of medieval
and Renaissance applied art, displays on Dutch history, a fine
Asian collection and, most importantly, an array of
seventeenth-century Dutch paintings that is far and away the best
in the world. Most people head straight for one of the museum's
great treasures, Rembrandt's The Night Watch , but there are
many other, perhaps more interesting, examples of his work, not
least the Staalmeesters , the late Jewish Bride , and
some private and beautifully expressive works - a portrait of his
first wife Saskia, a couple of his mother, a touching depiction of
his son, Titus, and a late Self-Portrait , caught in
mid-shrug as the Apostle Paul. There are also portraits by Frans
Hals, landscapes by Jan van Goyen and Jacob van Ruisdael, the
riotous scenes of Jan Steen and the peaceful interiors of Vermeer
and Pieter de Hooch.
Just south, the Vincent Van Gogh Museum , Paulus
Potterstraat 7 (daily 10am-6pm; €7; www.vangoghmuseum.nl ),
comprises the collection of the artist's art-dealer brother Theo,
with drawings, notebooks and letters displayed on a rotating basis,
and a collection arranged chronologically, from the early years in
Holland and works like the dour Potato Eaters , to the
brighter works he painted after moving to Paris and then Arles,
where he produced vivid canvases like The Yellow House and
the Sunflowers series. Later, more expressionistic works
include the Garden of St Paul's Hospital , painted at the
asylum in St-Rémy, and his final, tortured paintings, including
The Reaper and Wheatfield with Crows .
Just along the street at Paulus Potterstraat 13 is the
modern-art Stedelijk Museum (daily: April-Sept 10am-6pm;
Oct-March 11am-5pm; €4.50; www.stedelijk.nl ). Much of its
wide-ranging permanent collection is on display in July and August,
and parts of it year-round. There's normally a good showing on the
first floor, starting off with drawings by Picasso, Matisse and
their contemporaries, and moving on to paintings by the major
Impressionists - Manet, Monet, Bonnard - and Post-Impressionists
such as Ensor, Van Gogh and Cézanne. There's also work by Mondriaan
and Malevich, a good stock of Marc Chagall's paintings, and a
number of American Abstract Expressionists (Mark Rothko, Ellsworth
Kelly and Barnett Newman). Two additional large-scale attractions
are on the ground floor: Karel Appel's Bar in the foyer,
installed for the opening of the Stedelijk in the 1950s, and the
same artist's wild daubings in the museum's restaurant.
Further along Stadhouderskade from the Rijksmuseum, the
Heineken Brewery , though no longer in production, runs
tours of the characteristic red-copper brewery (Mon-Fri 9.30am
& 11am, June to mid-Sept also 1pm & 2.30pm, July & Aug
also Sat 11am, 1pm & 2.30pm; €1; over-18s only), providing a
résumé of Heineken's history and the methods involved in the
brewing process; afterwards you are given snacks and free
beer . South of here is the neighbourhood known as De
Pijp ("The Pipe") after its long, sombre canyons of brick
tenements that went up in the nineteenth century as the city grew
out of its canal-girded centre. This has always been one of the
city's closest-knit communities, and one of its liveliest, with
numerous inexpensive Surinamese and Turkish restaurants and a
cheerful hub in the long slim thoroughfare of Albert
Cuypstraat , whose general market is the largest in the
city.