Vondelpark

The Vondelpark opened in 1865 as a private riding-and-strolling park for the new money of the Canal Ring, laid out by the Zocher family in the fashionable English landscape style — winding paths, irregular ponds, sightlines that pretend to be countryside. The city grew around it until the park became what it is now: 47 hectares of shared back garden for a city whose apartments famously don't have gardens, drawing some ten million visits a year.

It works because Amsterdammers actually use it. On the first warm Saturday of the year the lawns disappear under picnic blankets, disposable barbecues, and entire birthday parties; joggers and cargo-bike parents share the loop from 7 AM; and in the evening half the Oud-West seems to be drinking rosé by the Blauwe Theehuis, the flying-saucer functionalist teahouse of 1937 that's the park's best landmark rendezvous.

From June through August the Openluchttheater — the open-air theatre at the park's heart — runs a genuinely good free programme: concerts, comedy, kids' shows, dance, most weekends and many weekday evenings. Checking its schedule and building an evening around it is the best free entertainment in the city. Also look for Picasso's "The Fish," a concrete sculpture he donated for the park's centenary in 1965, standing casually on a lawn as if it were a bench.

Rent a bike and enter from the Van Baerlestraat side after the museums — Museumplein is two minutes away — then roll the length of the park and out the far end into the Vondelbuurt cafés. The park is open around the clock and lit at night; it's at its photogenic best in the hour after opening-time mist.