Things to Do with Kids in Amsterdam-Centrum

The Amsterdam Museum turns 100, and it is celebrating with a festival of tours, creative workshops, exhibitions and birthday cake.

For families, the easiest way in is the giant city model, where projections show a small village on the Amstel growing into today's city, with 30,500 hand-placed buildings to spot. Much of the program is pitched at adults, so a visit to the model suits kids better than the talks and tours.

An exhibition of more than 80 works on paper from the museum's own collection, by Rembrandt and other artists up to today's makers, all experimenting with technique and material. In the middle of the show, visitors make their own drawing and try different papers and drawing materials, just like the artists on the walls. It all happens in the house where Rembrandt lived and worked.

An exhibition on the golden age of stage magic, around 1900, when magicians left the fairground for big theaters. Kids meet Harry Houdini, Okito and other famous acts, many of them Jewish performers, and see how vanishing, escaping and levitating tricks work.

Then they try a few themselves, like sawing a parent in half. Dutch illusionist Hans Klok is the guide. School-age kids get the most out of it.

A kids' trail through Abracadabra, the Jewish Museum's exhibition on the golden age of stage magic. Kids grab a magic magnifying glass and hunt for seven magic props that illusionist Hans Klok has hidden among the displays.

Along the way they meet magicians like Harry Houdini and can try tricks themselves, like sawing mom in half or making a brother disappear. It suits curious kids who like a mission.

Meesterwerk Amsterdam brings the city's 17th-century paintings to the Stadsarchief, the city archive on Vijzelstraat. Kids look for hidden details in harbor scenes, markets and canal views, and ask whether the Golden Age city was as grand as the paintings say. A free treasure hunt booklet and an audio tour in Dutch and English let families explore at their own pace.

Willie wants nothing more than to be a real superhero: Super Willie. The trouble is, he's clumsy and has no idea how to get superpowers. Just as he's about to give up, a real superheroine appears.

It's a comic children's show at Kindertheater de Toverknol on the Kerkstraat, a good pick for kids who like superhero stories.

A read-aloud for the youngest listeners, from babies to preschoolers, in a children's bookshop. It is short enough for small attention spans. Parents stay close and can have coffee or tea in the shop's coffee corner while the reading happens.

Veere is looking forward to Sinterklaas evening, until Sinterklaas turns up stuck on the roof with his beard tangled in an antenna. Veere calls Jan the firefighter, who is a clumsy choice of rescuer. Kids dance and sing along to well-known and lesser-known Sinterklaas songs in a classic Toverknol show.

A detective-style walk through the Stadsschouwburg, Amsterdam's grand old city theater. A real theater guide leads kids and their grown-ups through the building, kids get to open doors that normally stay shut, and small games and tasks turn up the people who have acted, danced and sung here. Kids pick up some theater history and a little about acting along the way.

Sinterklaas wakes up outside the museum and has lost his magic book and three golden apples. Kids search for them with a museum guide through a canal house and its hidden attic church. Parents can come along or slip out for coffee. Everyone gets pepernoten and a drink afterward.

Every November, Sinterklaas sails into Amsterdam on his steamboat and the city comes out to welcome him. Kids wave from the banks of the Amstel as the boat goes by, then line the streets as he rides through the center with his Pieten and decorated floats. At Leidseplein he speaks to the children himself.

It is made for kids who still believe in him. Expect big crowds.

Every winter, about 20 light artworks go up in, over and beside the canals of Amsterdam's old center. Families see them two ways: on foot along the route, or from a canal boat.

The festival app has a Kids Walk with fun facts, quiz questions and a scavenger hunt that ends in a small prize. It suits kids happy to be out in the cold after dark.

Astronaut André Kuipers and writer Sander Koenen take the audience on a mission to the moon, with stories, video footage and live experiments on stage. Kids watch a rocket launch up close and find out how you eat, sleep, wash and pee in space, and how high you can jump on the moon.

The show is in Dutch, so it suits kids who follow spoken Dutch with ease.

Kids sit on cushions and blankets right next to the musicians at Splendor, a collective of 55 professional players in an old bathhouse. Each concert brings a different set of instruments, from bassoon and cimbalom to recorders, tuba and the Turkish kemenche. The musicians play short pieces and explain them, the whole room joins a simple music game, and afterward kids can touch the instruments and sometimes try one.

Carré opened in 1887 as a circus building, and at Christmas the ring comes back. The World Christmas Circus books top international acts, many of them prize winners at the Monte Carlo circus festival: flying trapeze, aerial duets, clowns and acrobats. This winter is its 40th edition, with more award-winning acts than any year before.

A classic circus of separate acts suits kids who lose the thread of a play.

After a long fall down the rabbit hole, Alice lands in a world where nothing behaves. She shrinks, grows, chases a panicky rabbit, meets a headless cat and argues with a pushy alter ego. De Toneelmakerij and DOX tell it with dance, music, humor and big stage images.

It is a coming-of-age story about not knowing who you are yet, which suits kids starting to ask that themselves.

The Canal Parade is the big public moment of Pride Amsterdam. Decorated boats from LGBTQ+ groups, companies and public institutions sail through the canals with music and dancers on board, while huge crowds cheer from the quays and bridges.

Kids who can handle crowds and loud music get a colorful, high-energy afternoon. It suits toddlers less, and some boats and sponsors are aimed at adults.

Noordermarkt is the market square in front of the Noorderkerk in the Jordaan, where traders have set up since 1623. On Saturdays an organic farmers' market sits alongside stalls of antiques, vintage clothes, books and handmade goods, with the Lindengracht fruit and flower market around the corner. Mondays it is the general goods market alone. Kids can browse the toy and bric-a-brac stalls and snack their way through the food stands.

A small children's theater on Kerkstraat with a new interactive show each month. Before the curtain opens, kids can dress up as a princess, knight, superhero or animal. They sit on benches close to the stage, and the actors invite them to sing, dance and talk back. Stories cover themes like losing teeth, crushes and sharing.

Birthday parties, holiday theater camps and dance, music and drama classes run here too.

The inner harbor of the Marineterrein, a former navy yard, has been an official swimming spot since April 2025. A floating boardwalk closes off the water for laps or floating around on hot days. Water quality and temperature are posted online. Swimming is at your own risk, so it suits confident swimmers.

Nearby, a Sup Sup Club box rents paddleboards and a fitness garden has monkey bars.

The city's central library fills 10 floors of a 2007 building by architect Jo Coenen, a short walk east of Amsterdam Centraal. Kids get a dedicated children's book section, and the building has 1,200 seats, rotating exhibitions on design, art and books, and a Library Museum.

The seventh-floor restaurant has a south-facing terrace.

VROG fills a 3,000 m² former pedestrian tunnel under Mr. Visserplein, next to the Portuguese Synagogue. The space holds a trampoline field, a jump tower with an airbag for practicing flips, a bouncy basketball and soccer court, an indoor parkour park and a dance studio.

Kids can drop in to jump or sign up for parkour, trampoline, K-pop and breakdance classes. Parents wait in the café bar overlooking the hall.

A small city farm on the water on Bickerseiland, one of the Westelijke Eilanden, with views of boats and old warehouses. Kids walk among the animals: two pigs, two pygmy goats, three sheep, rabbits, guinea pigs, ducks and chickens.

There are no cuddle sessions or animals on laps; the team shows kids how to approach each animal at its own pace. The farm shop sells drinks, ice cream and fresh eggs.

Live actors in period costume lead visitors through eight interactive shows covering 750 years of Amsterdam's darkest history, with full sets and special effects.

Groups of up to 30 move from room to room, and the actors pull people from the crowd into the scenes. It is dark and loud, with jump scares, so it suits kids who like a fright and laugh it off afterward.

A botanical garden founded in 1638 as a medicinal herb garden, now growing more than 4,000 plant species.

Kids head first for the Butterfly House, where tropical butterflies fly free and new ones hatch in a chrysalis cabinet. The Palm House holds ancient cycads, the Climate House runs from jungle to desert, and the carnivorous plant bed puts Venus flytraps and sundews at kid eye level.

A former cargo barge moored on the Prinsengracht, kept as the family home it was from 1967 to 1997. Visitors step down five steps at the stern into a 23-meter boat whose period rooms keep their original decoration, down to the living-room fireplace.

At the bow, kids can spot the rivets holding the steel plates together. Houseboat models, photos and a free audio guide in 18 languages fill in the story.

The Jewish Museum sits in the former Great Synagogue and covers Jewish religion, history and daily life through objects, art and personal stories, including the silver Rintel chanukiah, over a meter tall.

Off the lobby, Jewish Museum Junior is the Hollander family home, where everything can be picked up: kids bake challah in the kitchen, write their name in Hebrew and listen to Jewish music in the attic.

This is the house where Rembrandt lived and painted, with his studio and an etching loft. Staff show how he made his own paint, from toxic lead and red lice to linseed oil and pig bladders, then ink and print etchings on a press. Everyone takes a print home.

A family audio tour follows Kwast, the painter's dog, through the house's secret nooks and crannies.

A wax museum on Dam Square with more than 90 life-size figures of pop stars, athletes, Dutch royals, DJs and Marvel heroes, spread over more than 10 themed areas.

Kids can touch the figures and pose with them, and try the interactive sets: a DJ booth, a catwalk, a karaoke café and a Van Gogh painting corner.

Body Worlds shows real human bodies preserved by plastination, a process invented by anatomist Gunther von Hagens, across seven levels on Damrak. The current exhibition, The Happiness Project, links what goes on inside the body to mood and health: hearts, lungs, nerves and muscles laid open, plus whole figures posed mid-movement.

The bodies are real, so it suits curious older kids more than squeamish ones.

A 17th-century canal house where narrow corridors and steep stairs lead past period rooms, kitchens and box beds to a complete church hidden in the attic, built in 1663 when Catholics could not worship in public.

Kids follow a ladybird trail, opening marked cupboards to find out what an altar is and how an organ works. Older kids can earn a certificate on an audio tour.

Blue-and-white GVB ferries cross the River IJ from the docks behind Centraal Station to Amsterdam Noord. Kids walk or ride their bikes straight on board and watch the harbor go by from the deck.

The Buiksloterweg crossing is the shortest and busiest, landing by the Eye Filmmuseum. Longer routes run east to IJplein and west to NDSM Wharf, home to the STRAAT street-art museum.

The museum fills the canal house where Anne Frank and seven others hid from July 1942. Visitors climb steep stairs, pass behind the bookcase into the Secret Annex, and see Anne's room with the movie-star pictures she glued to the wall, plus her original red-checked diary.

The annex stays unfurnished at Otto Frank's request. The story is told through quotes, photos and video, and some images are hard to watch.

The National Maritime Museum fills a 17th-century naval storehouse on the Oosterdok with 500 years of Dutch seafaring. Moored outside is a full-size replica of the East Indiaman Amsterdam, where kids swing in hammocks, haul cargo and take the helm.

Inside, Doris the Diver is a story-led play exhibition for the youngest visitors, and The Tale of the Whale lets older kids step inside a life-size whale.

Micropia is a science museum about microbes, the living things too small to see with the naked eye. More than 40 species grow in a working lab inside the museum, and kids look at them through microscopes and watch the lab technicians at work.

Interactive exhibits like the Kiss-o-meter and the Bodyscan show how many microbes live on and inside a person, and a new microbe goes on show each month.

ARTIS is one of the five oldest zoos in the world, set in the Plantage area among 800 trees and 26 national monuments. Around 300 animal species live here, including an Asian elephant herd with two young calves.

The ticket also covers the new Aquarium and the Planetarium, where dome shows travel through the solar system. Zookeepers give talks every day about feeding and training the animals.

NEMO is a hands-on science museum where kids test things for themselves. Fenomena covers light, sound and static electricity, Technium the technology around us, Elementa space and lab experiments, and Humania the human body through games and tests.

In the daily lab workshop kids put on lab coats and safety glasses for experiments with everyday objects. The roof is the highest city square in the Netherlands, with wide city views.