Anne Frank walking tour

This walking tour of Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter offers a glimpse into the city’s rich history as a safe haven for Jewish people, as well as places significant to Anne Frank and her family before, during and after World War II.

A local guide will take you on a three- to four-hour walk where you’ll stop at the sobering Auschwitz Monument, before heading to the Jewish Historical Museum. The museum is home to 11,000 items pertaining to the history, ceremony and art of Jewish culture and religion in the Netherlands and throughout the world.

You’ll also see the home where diarist Anne Frank lived before she and her family were forced into hiding during Nazi occupation. You’ll see where she attended school, the bookstore where her diary was purchased and the home her father returned to after surviving the Holocaust. As you walk, look down to find copper plaques embedded into the ground, commemorating the life and death of each of the Frank family members.

Your private guide will meet you at your Amsterdam hotel for this three- to four-hour walking tour of the city’s Jewish Quarter, which is available year-round and will end back at your hotel.

Your local guide will take you to the Auschwitz Monument, which is made of six large mirrors laid flat on the ground, all of them shattered. Inscribed are the words Never Again Auschwitz.

You’ll then head to the Jewish Historical Museum, or Joods Historisch Museum in Dutch. The museum is dedicated to Jewish history, culture and religion in the Netherlands and throughout the world, and is the only museum in the country dedicated solely to Jewish history. The museum actually opened its doors in 1932, but was forced to close during Nazi occupation, when much of the original collection was lost.

It reopened its doors in 1955, and in 1987 moved to its current location across from the Portuguese Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter. The museum’s collection consists of 11,000 art, ceremonial and historic objects, featured in consistently rotating exhibits.

While exploring the Jewish Quarter you’ll also see sites specific to Anne Frank and the rest of her family. You’ll get to pass by Merwedeplein square, where the Frank family lived in Amsterdam before being forced into hiding. You’ll also see the Jewish Lyceum school that Anne and her older sister Margot attended, as well as the bookstore where her diary was purchased, and the house her father, Otto, returned to when he was liberated from Auschwitz Birkenau.

Also in the square are Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, dedicated to the Frank family. These copper memorial plaques are embedded in the path and are embossed with the names of the family members, their date of birth and their date and place of death.