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C van Eesterenlaan slices south across a wide strip of water, the old Entrepothaven, bound for Zeeburgerkade, home to the Nederlands Persmuseum at no. 10 (Dutch Press Museum; Tues–Fri 10am–5pm & Sun noon–5pm; €4.50; www.persmuseum.nl). The museum has a mildly interesting series of displays on the leading Dutch newspapermen of yesteryear, beginning with Abraham Casteleyn, who first published a combined business and political newssheet in the 1650s. Of more immediate interest perhaps are the cartoons, often vitriolic attacks on those in power both in the Netherlands and elsewhere.

The Old Jewish Quarter and Eastern docklands | Zeeburg |

The Lloyd Hotel and around

To the west of the Sporenburg peninsula at Oostelijke Handelskade 34 stands the super-slick Lloyd Hotel, in an imaginatively revamped former 1920s prison. Close by are three minor points of interest: the Brasilie shopping centre, which occupies a former cocoa warehouse, the Odessa, a replica of a Russian merchant ship, now a restaurant, and the former offices of the KHL shipping line, now the KHL Koffiehuis, which once controlled this part of the dockland until the company went bankrupt in 1935.

To get back to Centraal Station, take tram #26 on Piet Heinkade, a couple of minutes’ walk from the Lloyd Hotel.

The Museum Quarter and the Vondelpark

During the nineteenth century, Amsterdam burst out of its restraining canals, gobbling up the surrounding countryside with a slew of new, residential suburbs. These neighbourhoods are mostly described in "The outer districts", but Amsterdam’s two leading museums, packed into a relatively small area around the edge of Museumplein, deserve their own section. The larger of the two, the Rijksmuseum, is in the throes of a major and extraordinarily long-winded revamp (scheduled to end in 2013), but the kernel of the collection – a superb sample of Dutch paintings from the seventeenth century, Amsterdam’s Golden Age – is still on display in the Philips Wing, the only part of the museum to remain open during the refurbishment. Similarly impressive is the nearby Van Gogh Museum, which boasts the most satisfying collection of van Gogh paintings in the world, with important works representative of all his artistic periods. Together, the two museums form one of Amsterdam’s biggest draws – to be supplemented by the contemporary art of the neighbouring Stedelijk Museum, due to reopen in 2010 after a complete refit. And, after all this art, you can head off into the expansive Vondelpark for a stroll.

The Museum Quarter and the Vondelpark |

Museumplein

Pancake-flat Museumplein is a large open space extending south from the Rijksmuseum to Van Baerlestraat, its wide lawns and gravelled spaces used for a variety of outdoor activities, from visiting circuses to political demonstrations. Other than being the location of the three museums described in this section, there’s not a great deal to it, though the group of slim steel blocks about three-quarters of the way down on the left-hand side forms a war memorial, commemorating the men, women and children who perished in the concentration camp at Ravensbruck.

The Museum Quarter and the Vondelpark | Museumplein |

The Rijksmuseum

Facing out towards the Singelgracht canal, at the head of Museumplein, the Rijksmuseum (daily 9am–6pm, Friday until 8.30pm; €11; audio guide €5; www.rijksmuseum.nl) occupies an imposing pile designed by Petrus J.H. Cuypers (1827–1921) – also the creator of Centraal Station – in the early 1880s. The leading Dutch architect of his day, Cuypers specialized in neo-Gothic churches, but this commission called for something more ambitious, the result being a reworking of the neo-Renaissance style then popular in the Netherlands, complete with towers and turrets, galleries, dormer windows and medallions. More importantly, the museum possesses an extravagant collection of paintings from every pre-twentieth-century period of Dutch art, together with a vast hoard of applied art and sculpture. Until the rest of the museum reopens in 2013, the Philips Wing is the only