Rijksmuseum

The Rijksmuseum is the only museum in the world with a public road running through it. Pierre Cuypers designed the building in 1876 with a passageway for cyclists and pedestrians cutting straight through the center — partly because Amsterdam's city planners insisted on maintaining the street grid, and partly because Cuypers loved a dramatic entrance. When it opened in 1885, King William III refused to attend the ceremony, allegedly calling the building "that convent" because he thought Cuypers — a Catholic — had made it look too much like a church.

The collection began in 1800 when the Dutch government, inspired by the French, decided the nation needed a proper museum. It started in The Hague with 200 paintings and objects. Napoleon's brother Louis moved it to Amsterdam in 1808, and the city contributed its own masterpieces, including Rembrandt's The Night Watch. Today the Rijksmuseum holds over one million objects spanning 800 years of Dutch art and history, though only about 8,000 are on display at any given time.

The Night Watch alone gets its own room — the Gallery of Honour — and it's been the museum's centerpiece since day one. But the Rijksmuseum is more than Rembrandt. Vermeer's Milkmaid, Delft pottery, colonial-era ship models, 17th-century dollhouses that cost more than actual houses — the collection is staggeringly broad.

The museum underwent a massive ten-year renovation from 2003 to 2013, during which Spanish architects Cruz y Ortiz restored Cuypers' original vision while modernizing everything underneath. The result reunified painting, applied arts, and history into a single chronological story. Walk through and you're essentially walking through the Netherlands from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.