Anne Frank House – one of Amsterdam’s top 3 museums

Anne Frank House & Museum

Estimated reading time: 16 minutes

A visit to the Anne Frank House is high on the bucket list of nearly everyone who stays in Amsterdam for the first time.

In pre-pandemic year 2019 this small museum ranked third in the Top 5 of Amsterdam’s most visited museums. That year it welcomed 1.3 million visitors, reaching its full capacity.

Mind you, travel guides warning you about the notoriously long queues to get into the museum (with waiting times between 1.5 and 3+ hours) are outdated by at least 6 years.

ANNE FRANK HOUSE TICKETS

Anne Frank House tickets are sold online only — and they are sold only at the museum’s official website.

You can book tickets for a regular museum visit, or for a museum visit + introductory program before your visit to the museum. In 30 minutes, we take you through the history of Anne Frank in the context of the Second World War. The program is in English and costs € 7.00 extra.

Plan ahead, since Anne Frank House tickets sell out fast — one month ahead of time. Here’s what you need to know:

Recommended: Anne Frank Story & Private Walking Tour

On June 12, 1942, Anne Frank was given a diary for her 13th birthday. A little over 3 weeks later, on July 6, the family goes into hiding.

Either before or after your visit to the Anne Frank House you may want to (re-)familiarize yourself with Anne’s story and that of Amsterdam during World War II.

This highly rated, 2 hour Anne Frank walking tour, certified by GetYourGuide, is a great way to do so.

You will find out more about Anne Frank on a walking tour of Amsterdam, led by an expert guide. Discover the city’s centuries-old Jewish Quarter in a small group setting while your guide weaves in anecdotes about Anne Frank’s life and World War II.

As you meander through Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter, hear about Anne Frank’s life and family dynamics. Learn about her family’s move from Germany, their time in hiding, and about her father’s life after the war. Listen as your guide shares stories of Anne Frank’s love for writing and the conditions she lived through during the 1930s and 1940s in Amsterdam. Discover how her diary became internationally famous.

On your tour, also hear about the Dutch Resistance during the Second World War and see where secret hiding places were located. Pass by important landmarks such as the Jewish Historical Museum, the Portuguese Synagogue, the Auschwitz Monument, and the façade of Anne Frank House.

This tour is a GetYourGuide Original. That means:

Note: The tour doesn’t include tickets to the Anne Frank House. They need to be purchased separately, at the Anne Frank House website.

PRACTICAL ANNE FRANK HOUSE MUSEUM INFORMATION

Address

Anne Frank House
Prinsengracht 263-267
The entrance is around the corner, at Westermarkt 20,
1016 DK Amsterdam

The Original Anne Frank House

The actual location of the house where the Frank family lived is Prinsengracht 263. The original house is part of the museum.

There is a small, enameled sign on the door. It reads, in Dutch, Anne Frank Huis. This is a popular photo spot!

Note that you cannot see the annex from outside the house, since it is located in the back of the building.

Another popular photo spot is a statue of Anne Frank, located at the other side of the Westerkerk church:

Anne Frank Statue

The statue of Anne Frank, located at the Southern side of the Westerkerk church, was unveiled on March 14, 1977. March 14 was long believed to be the day that Anne died. However, the Anne Frank House says:

Map: How to Get To the Anne Frank House

The Anne Frank House is just north of the Westerkerk, the church whose bells Anne wrote about.

It is a 12 minute walk from Dam square, or a 20 minute walk from Central Station.

Trams 13 and 17 stop at Westermarkt (both ride to and from Central Station). The stop is announced as ‘Westermarkt’ and ‘Anne Frank House.’ [Public Transport Tickets]

Tickets

See our detailed Anne Frank House Museum Ticket information.

Opening Hours

Monday to Thursday: 9:00 to 18:00 (9 am to 6 pm)
Friday to Sunday: 9:00 to 20:00 (9 am to 8 pm)

Exceptions
May 4: 9:00 to 17:00 (9 am to 5 pm)
October 5 (Yom Kippur): Closed
December 25 (Christmas): 9:00 to 17:00 (9 am to 5 pm)
December 31: 9:00 to 17:00 (9 am to 5 pm)

Busiest Times

As you’ll notice when you are ready to purchase your tickets online, morning time slots sell out fastest, followed by early-, mid- and late afternoon entry times.

No Guided Tours inside the Museum

The Anne Frank House museum does not provide guided tours. The house — with its narrow hallways and stairs, and its small rooms — makes that impossible.

However, visitors are provide with a free audio tour:

Free Audio Tour: Essential

Available in nine languages,²Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. the audio tour is an essential part of your visit. It provides information about the persecution of the Jews, the Second World War, the people who hid in the house, and the helpers who made it possible.

Before a major renovation, which was completed in 2018, the museum used to provide a printed guide.³If you’re interested to see what the old Anne Frank House Museum Guide looked like, you can view or download the 2012 version here. Nowadays visitors receive a free audio tour. As described below that allows for a more immersive, vastly improved experience.

Much Easier to Understand the Story and Context

The audio tour changes that for the better. It does not offer object-by-object explanations. Rather, it chronologically tells the story of the fate of the Jewish Frank family and the four other people with whom they were locked up in the Secret Annex between 1942 and 1944.

Fragments from Anne Frank’s diary, family stories, and historical perspectives provide context to what you see in each room.

Aide by the audio tour, visitors come away with a much clearer understanding of the Frank family story and context.

A Much Quieter Museum

Since visitors are now listening to their own headsets, it is quieter in the museum — which contributes to the atmosphere.

“What we tried to do is … use the family history as kind of a window onto a larger history,” said Tom Brink, the museum’s head of publications and presentations.

The audio tour also allowed curators to keep physical exhibits sparse.

“We wanted to preserve the character of the house, which is very much its emptiness,” said executive director Ronald Leopold. “I think its emptiness is probably the most powerful feature of the Anne Frank House.”

The emptiness “symbolizes the disappearance of the Jews from Amsterdam, including the Frank family,” adds managing director Garance Reus-Deelder.

Not Just A Museum: Also a Memorial Site

The audio tour includes a pointed period of silence. It comes at that part of the tour where visitors move from the light-filled front house via the bookcase into the cramped annex with its darkened windows. |

The silence in the audio tour is necessary, Brink explains. “Because the Anne Frank House is ultimately not only a museum, but also a memorial site.”

In our opinion this new approach makes a visit to the museum an even more impact-full experience than it already was.

Accessibility

People who have difficulty walking may have trouble climbing the steep staircases that are characteristic of most old Amsterdam houses.

Also, the old part of the Anne Frank House, which includes the Secret Annex, is not accessible to wheelchair users.

How Long Does a Visit to the Anne Frank House Take?

How much time do you need to see the Anne Frank House?

Once you are inside, a visit to the museum takes about 60 to 80 minutes. However, you are welcome to take all the time you need for your visit.

Add extra time if you also want to visit the museum’s café and the bookstore.

Frankly, we’d advice you give the café a miss, in favor of any of dozens of cafes and restaurants in the immediate neighborhood. The Jordaan district is just across the Prinsengracht.

Also, while it’s easy to be tempted into purchasing books and videos while the experience of the museum is still fresh, keep your luggage limitations in mind.

It’s a lot easier to have Amazon.com deliver Anne Frank books, videos, and related material to your home than to lug it around.

Nearby Hotels

Amsterdam is a small city with a finely-mazed, efficient public transport system. So it is not necessary to look for a hotel near the museum. Then again, why not? It’s a fantastic area, right in the heart of the old city.

Hotels near the Anne Frank House

BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT THE ANNE FRANK HOUSE

Anne Frank House – A Must-See Museum

During the Second World War¹ Amsterdam was occupied territory, forcing Jews like Anne Frank and her family to go into hiding.

The Anne Frank House, the place where Anne wrote her famous diary – and where the original notebook is on display – tells the history of the eight people who hid there, and of those who helped them.

The original building — the Achterhuis (Secret Annex) has been restored and looks the way it did during the Second World War.

The building next door — with the type of modern façade that looks completely out of place in this neighborhood of picturesque houses — includes an exhibition on racial repression.

Both buildings can be visited during your tour of the Anne Frank House museum.

An Emotional Experience

While most people are familiar with the story of Anne Frank and its context — the horrors of the German occupation and the Holocaust — many people describe their visit to the museum as an intensely emotional experience.

The museum’s collection is very sensitively done, and there are no images a child should not see. However, if you bring young children along, you may want to prepare them by providing some background information.

Also be prepared to discuss the experience with them after your visit.

Note that the museum itself puts on tours for primary or elementary school classes.

Anne Frank’s diary is generally read and understood by children at the age of 9 and up.

Tip: A visit to the Anne Frank House can be an emotional experience. If you visit in the morning, you may want to plan something simple and enjoyable for the afternoon — like a walk along the canals or through the Jordaan district (just across the canal). Or the other way around if your visit is scheduled for the afternoon.

Anne Frank’s Video Diary

What if Anne Frank had a camera instead of a diary?

Young and old alike appreciate this video series, available in full on YouTube. Watch the episodes together with your children, before or after your visit.

Luna Cruz Perez plays Anne Frank, sharing her life in the Secret Annex, her thoughts and her feelings with the camera. All characters, locations, and events in the series are based on Anne Frank’s diary letters.

Renovation: The Renewed Anne Frank Museum

After two years of remodeling the renewed Anne Frank House was officially re-opened on November 22, 2018 by His Majesty King Willem-Alexander.

Remarkably, the museum stayed during the renovation.

The Secret Annex remains the same, but everything around it has been renewed. If you have visited the museum before the renovation you’ll want to visit again.

The renovation was necessary to better tell Anne Frank’s tragic story to a new generation of visitors who may know little about the horrors of the Holocaust. Many of the museum’s visitors from abroad are younger than 25.

In the Netherlands, 2020 marked the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. There are fewer and fewer eyewitnesses, and many people are not well aware of the circumstances that drove the Franks into hiding.

That made it necessary to provide more context.

Record number of visitors

The Anne Frank House is one of Amsterdam’s most popular tourist destinations, as is among its most visited museums.

Pre-pandemic, it was the third most popular museum in the city, after the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum.

In 2017, 1.266.966 people visited the museum, for a cumulative total of 33.618.866(!)

In 2016, the museum welcomed some 1.300.000 visitors — over 30.000 more than in 2015.² It was the seventh year in a row that the number of visitors increased.

Unfortunately, that popularity led to infamous queues with waiting times up to 2 hours and longer. [Photo]

That situation was successfully addressed in 2016 when the Anne Frank Museum switched to a new ticket and entry system. From 9 am through 3:30 pm the museum was open only for those who had bought tickets online. From 3:30 the museum was open to those willing to stand in line (often for 2 hours or more) to purchase a ticket at the box office. [Note: nowadays no tickets are sold at the door. You must buy them online ahead of your visit]

Usually the line reached to the homomonument,³ (the triangles at the Keizersgracht side of the church), and you could count on at least 1-1½ hour waiting time.

If you were standing across from the house at number 6, the wait was 30-45 minutes.

However, the queue often ended near the French Fries and Fish stalls — in which case a 2+ hour wait was not unusual.

Remember the Infamous Queue?

Until the May 2016 introduction of a new ticket and entry system a visit to the Anne Frank House meant standing in line for a l-o-n-g time.

For the better part of the year — certainly during the high season — huge lines formed outside. The average waiting time during spring and summer months is 1-1½ hours — and at peak times 2 hours — or longer. [See the queque]

In 2014 Dutch broadcaster NOS made a documentary about the ‘eternal’ queue in front of the museum. This is the trailer for that documentary:

And a video from a visitor:

You can also pay a virtual visit to the Anne Frank House

In the same neighborhood

The Anne Frank House is located in the Western Canal Belt. Across the canal, the Prinsengracht, one can see the Jordaan – one of Holland’s most popular neighborhoods. South of the Westerkerk, across the Rozengracht thoroughfare, is the so-called ‘Nine Streets’ shopping district.

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