Van Gogh Museum

Vincent van Gogh painted for only ten years, and this museum owns the spine of all of it: some 200 paintings and 500 drawings, most inherited directly from his brother Theo's widow, Johanna — the woman who almost single-handedly built his posthumous fame. The permanent collection walks his decade chronologically, and the effect is unlike any other single-artist museum: you watch the dark Dutch realism of The Potato Eaters (1885) explode into colour within two years of hitting Paris, then intensify through Arles — Sunflowers, The Bedroom, The Yellow House — before the asylum years at Saint-Rémy and the last, turbulent wheatfields of Auvers.

The quieter works land hardest. Almond Blossom, painted for his newborn nephew as something hopeful, hangs in its own reverent crowd. The self-portraits — he couldn't afford models — track his state year by year like a clinical chart. And the museum is honest about the biography without milking it: the letters to Theo displayed alongside the canvases do the work.

Tickets are timed, online-only, and genuinely sell out — in high season, days ahead. Book the moment your dates firm up, and take either the 9 AM slot or anything after 4 PM; the middle of the day is shoulder-to-shoulder. Friday evenings (open late in season, with music and a bar in the atrium) are the local's slot.

It sits on Museumplein sharing a lawn with the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk — the temptation is to stack all three in a day. Don't. Two museums maximum; Van Gogh demands more attention per square metre than any of them.