Rijksmuseum

The Rijksmuseum is the Netherlands compressed into one building: 8,000 objects on display from a collection of a million, arranged chronologically across four floors of Pierre Cuypers' 1885 palace — a building so ornate that the Protestant king Willem III refused to set foot in what he called "that cathedral." A ten-year, €375-million renovation finished in 2013 stripped a century of partitions and returned it to Cuypers' original painted galleries.

Everything funnels toward the Gallery of Honour and its climax, Rembrandt's Night Watch (1642) — the group portrait that broke every rule of the genre by turning a static militia lineup into a scene in motion. It hangs behind glass at the gallery's end like an altar-piece. On the way you pass the best Vermeers anywhere: The Milkmaid, with its impossible pointillé light on the bread crusts, and The Little Street. Frans Hals, Jan Steen's chaotic households, and Rembrandt's Jewish Bride ("what a tender hand," Van Gogh said of it) fill the flanking bays.

The move: book the 9 AM slot and walk straight to the Gallery of Honour — it's serenely empty for the first forty minutes while the tour groups assemble downstairs. Do the rest of the second floor, then pick one other era; the museum rewards a second visit more than a forced march. The library (the Netherlands' oldest art library, all wrought iron and spiral stairs) and the Asian Pavilion are the two most-missed rooms.

The gardens, with rotating sculpture exhibitions, are free and open to anyone — as is the Cuypers passage straight through the building's heart, where cyclists pedal past a museum entrance to the sound of buskers under the vaults. Very Amsterdam.