traveldk.com

Shabby but vibrant, De Pijp is a district where a wide mix of immigrants, artists, students and young couples create a heady atmosphere. Albert Cuypmarkt, which has been trading since 1904, is its bustling hub. The street it occupies, once a canal, was named after Dutch landscape painter Albert Cuyp. With around 350 stalls, backed by all manner of shops and ethnic restaurants, it’s an unmissable experience. Typically Dutch food stalls – cheese, fish, waffles – jostle merrily with clothes, fabrics, shoes and bags, all selling at rock-bottom prices.

Undoubtedly one of Amsterdam’s most picturesque sights, the flower market is a magnet for tourists. There are local shoppers too, buying armfuls for their houses, while visitors arrange for bulbs to be mailed home. Vendors once sailed up the Amstel from their nurseries to this spot on the Singel, selling their wares directly from their boats. Nowadays the stalls are still floating, though you wouldn’t know it as they feel firmly fixed.

A chance to see inside a private canal house, whose grand yet approachable 18thcentury interior recreates a bygone age (see Museum Van Loon).

Though it lacks the lived-in feel of the Museum Van Loon, this 17th-century canal house has its own special atmosphere. An air of stiff formality tinged with melancholy pervades its stately rooms: the Ballroom; the Blue Room, reserved for the men of the house, with painted ceiling by Jacob de Wit; the glittering Dining Room; and the delicate Garden Room, with views over the formal garden. The collections of its last owners, Sandrina Holthuysen and her husband, Abraham Willet, are displayed throughout – paintings, glass, ceramics, silver. The top floors are used for temporary exhibitions. It was the widowed Sandrina who left the house and its contents to the city. She died a lonely death in 1885.

This former butter market has what you might call a split personality. In its centre is a 19th-century statue of Rembrandt set in a tranquil garden, but around its sides are neon-lit, low-brow and – at night – high-octane bars and cafés, packed with Amsterdammers and visitors alike. This is a great place for an early evening drink; you might choose grand cafés Schiller and De Kroon, as popular at the turn of the 20th century as they are now.

In the late 19th century, specialist antique dealers with an eye for an opportunity began to set up shop on Nieuwe Spiegelstraat, leading to the newly opened Rijksmuseum. There are more than 80 of them in the area now, making it a sparkling, elegant place in which to stroll. Content yourself with looking longingly at the gleaming displays of antique furniture, porcelain and glass, or treat yourself to a faded old Delft tile for just a few euros from Kramer.

Amsterdam’s – perhaps the world’s – most elaborate cinema was the extraordinary creation of a driven, self-made Jewish tailor from Poland. Obsessed by film and the belief that it could change lives, he masterminded a vast team of craftsmen and conjured the cinema, in 1921, in a slum known as Devil’s Corner. He was later to perish in Auschwitz, but his wonderful creation – loosely Art Nouveau, but termed Tuschinski Style for its unique mixture of influences – lives on. In 2002 it reopened, after a multi-million dollar renovation. In the process, hitherto unknown paintings of Vogue-style ladies were uncovered, and the theatre has been returned to its former breathtaking glory. Buy a ticket for Screen One to admire the main theatre before the lights go down.