Plan a first trip to The Hague with kids around these. They're the places we'd take visiting family first, picked because they hold a kid's attention and not only an adult's. The city runs right to the North Sea, so mix the museums with a few hours on the beach at Scheveningen. Here's what we checked, from Madurodam to Duinrell.
Madurodam is a miniature park of famous Dutch landmarks built at 1:25 scale. Kids can watch container ships move through the port of Rotterdam, spot the Cube Houses and walk past Amsterdam canals lined with hundreds of bicycles.
Hands-on spots include water play, model trains, wind power and port traffic games, plus playgrounds. Indoor attractions such as New Amsterdam, where kids help fire the cannons, make it work in rain.
A wide, sandy North Sea beach in front of the Kurhaus and the 382-meter Scheveningen Pier, a two-deck pier with a bungee jump on top. Kids dig and paddle at the waterline, and older ones can try a lesson at the surf school on Strandweg. Beach clubs line the sand, with the boulevard's restaurants just behind.
SkyView de Pier is a 50-meter Ferris wheel on the Pier of Scheveningen, set 8 meters above the North Sea. Its 36 gondolas are closed and air-conditioned, and each group rides alone. From the top, kids can pick out the beach, the boulevard, the sea and the city in a full 360-degree view. It works best as a calm add-on to a beach day, not a thrill ride.
An aquarium with 13 themed areas, from the starfish and sharks of the North Sea to the poison frogs and stingrays of the Amazon. The centerpiece is a glass tunnel where sharks and rays swim overhead.
Kids also meet otters and penguins, look into a rock pool of sea urchins and shark eggs, and walk through Sea at Night, a dark reef room of glowing ocean life.
Museon-Omniversum pairs a hands-on museum with the Dome, a giant-screen film theater. The One Planet Expo walks kids through the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals with interactive exhibits, while themed rooms and changing exhibitions cover nature, culture and science, drawn from a collection of over 90,000 objects.
It sits next to the Kunstmuseum in Zorgvliet. Under-4s are welcome but need more guidance at the exhibits.
The Children's Book Museum shares the Royal Library building with the Museum of Literature. Kids play inside book worlds: treasure hunting with Bear and pie baking with Pig in I am Frog, from Max Velthuijs's books, or roaming Papiria to beat the Ink Gobbler and write their own story, poem or comic. Under-7s get The Storytime Tent and the clamber-and-play ABC with the Animals and Me.
The Mauritshuis is a 17th-century palace on the Hofvijver pond, beside the Binnenhof, filled with Dutch and Flemish Old Masters. Kids can stand in front of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, Fabritius' Goldfinch and Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.
The galleries are intimate rooms with damask wallpaper, chandeliers and painted ceilings, and over 200 masterpieces are on show.
More than 120 prints by M.C. Escher hang in the former winter palace of Queen Emma on Lange Voorhout, from Day and Night to the seven-meter Metamorphosis III.
Kids get the most from the second floor, "Through Escher's Eyes": they turn giant or tiny in a few seconds, make their own tessellation, play with impossible figures and walk an Op-art room where the artworks seem to move.
Panorama Mesdag is a rotunda built around one painting: a 360-degree view of the sea, beach, dunes and fishing village of Scheveningen, 114.5 meters around and 14.6 meters high, the largest painting in the Netherlands. Kids climb a spiral staircase above an artificial dune to see it as if standing on Scheveningen's highest dune in 1881.
Side galleries show more work by Hendrik Willem Mesdag and Sientje Mesdag-van Houten.
The Louwman Museum holds more than 275 rare and iconic automobiles, from the first motorized vehicles to designs far ahead of their time, plus car posters, sculptures, trophies and miniatures.
Kids get a free printed treasure hunt and pen on arrival: each answer found in the halls gives a letter toward a hidden word, and a solved sheet earns a small gift at the museum shop.
Meijendel is the largest continuous nature area in South Holland: woods, high dunes and infiltration lakes run by water company Dunea. De Tapuit visitor center is the starting point, where kids look for water creatures in the aquarium, meet the dune animals and test what they know about drinking water.
Marked trails start here, one passing the Monkeybos, where kids may leave the path to play.
Duinrell is an amusement park in a national park of woods and dunes, with more than 40 rides. Older kids take on the Falcon coaster, with its loop and vertical drop; families share the Splash boats, Ferris wheel, bumper boats and toboggan run.
In the middle sits the Tiki Pool, an indoor water park with 21 slides and Playa, a kids' area with small slides and a heated toddler pool.
Plan a first trip to The Hague with kids around these. They're the places we'd take visiting family first, picked because they hold a kid's attention and not only an adult's. The city runs right to the North Sea, so mix the museums with a few hours on the beach at Scheveningen. Here's what we checked, from Madurodam to Duinrell.
Madurodam is a miniature park of famous Dutch landmarks built at 1:25 scale. Kids can watch container ships move through the port of Rotterdam, spot the Cube Houses and walk past Amsterdam canals lined with hundreds of bicycles.
Hands-on spots include water play, model trains, wind power and port traffic games, plus playgrounds. Indoor attractions such as New Amsterdam, where kids help fire the cannons, make it work in rain.
A wide, sandy North Sea beach in front of the Kurhaus and the 382-meter Scheveningen Pier, a two-deck pier with a bungee jump on top. Kids dig and paddle at the waterline, and older ones can try a lesson at the surf school on Strandweg. Beach clubs line the sand, with the boulevard's restaurants just behind.
SkyView de Pier is a 50-meter Ferris wheel on the Pier of Scheveningen, set 8 meters above the North Sea. Its 36 gondolas are closed and air-conditioned, and each group rides alone. From the top, kids can pick out the beach, the boulevard, the sea and the city in a full 360-degree view. It works best as a calm add-on to a beach day, not a thrill ride.
An aquarium with 13 themed areas, from the starfish and sharks of the North Sea to the poison frogs and stingrays of the Amazon. The centerpiece is a glass tunnel where sharks and rays swim overhead.
Kids also meet otters and penguins, look into a rock pool of sea urchins and shark eggs, and walk through Sea at Night, a dark reef room of glowing ocean life.
Museon-Omniversum pairs a hands-on museum with the Dome, a giant-screen film theater. The One Planet Expo walks kids through the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals with interactive exhibits, while themed rooms and changing exhibitions cover nature, culture and science, drawn from a collection of over 90,000 objects.
It sits next to the Kunstmuseum in Zorgvliet. Under-4s are welcome but need more guidance at the exhibits.
The Children's Book Museum shares the Royal Library building with the Museum of Literature. Kids play inside book worlds: treasure hunting with Bear and pie baking with Pig in I am Frog, from Max Velthuijs's books, or roaming Papiria to beat the Ink Gobbler and write their own story, poem or comic. Under-7s get The Storytime Tent and the clamber-and-play ABC with the Animals and Me.
The Mauritshuis is a 17th-century palace on the Hofvijver pond, beside the Binnenhof, filled with Dutch and Flemish Old Masters. Kids can stand in front of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, Fabritius' Goldfinch and Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.
The galleries are intimate rooms with damask wallpaper, chandeliers and painted ceilings, and over 200 masterpieces are on show.
More than 120 prints by M.C. Escher hang in the former winter palace of Queen Emma on Lange Voorhout, from Day and Night to the seven-meter Metamorphosis III.
Kids get the most from the second floor, "Through Escher's Eyes": they turn giant or tiny in a few seconds, make their own tessellation, play with impossible figures and walk an Op-art room where the artworks seem to move.
Panorama Mesdag is a rotunda built around one painting: a 360-degree view of the sea, beach, dunes and fishing village of Scheveningen, 114.5 meters around and 14.6 meters high, the largest painting in the Netherlands. Kids climb a spiral staircase above an artificial dune to see it as if standing on Scheveningen's highest dune in 1881.
Side galleries show more work by Hendrik Willem Mesdag and Sientje Mesdag-van Houten.
The Louwman Museum holds more than 275 rare and iconic automobiles, from the first motorized vehicles to designs far ahead of their time, plus car posters, sculptures, trophies and miniatures.
Kids get a free printed treasure hunt and pen on arrival: each answer found in the halls gives a letter toward a hidden word, and a solved sheet earns a small gift at the museum shop.
Meijendel is the largest continuous nature area in South Holland: woods, high dunes and infiltration lakes run by water company Dunea. De Tapuit visitor center is the starting point, where kids look for water creatures in the aquarium, meet the dune animals and test what they know about drinking water.
Marked trails start here, one passing the Monkeybos, where kids may leave the path to play.
Duinrell is an amusement park in a national park of woods and dunes, with more than 40 rides. Older kids take on the Falcon coaster, with its loop and vertical drop; families share the Splash boats, Ferris wheel, bumper boats and toboggan run.
In the middle sits the Tiki Pool, an indoor water park with 21 slides and Playa, a kids' area with small slides and a heated toddler pool.
