Visit the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam: an emotional museum commemorating Nazi persecution during the Second World War.
The Anne Frank Museum, dedicated to the young girl – made world-famous for keeping a diary detailing the horrors of Nazi occupation – who fell victim to the Holocaust with her family, is a priceless testimony to the history of the Second World War. Located on Amsterdam’s Prinsengracht canal, Anne Frank’s house is at Westermarkt 20, a twenty-minute walk from the central station. A visit to the house-museum of the teenage author who left her mark on history is a chance to rediscover the history of this dark era, and how Anne Frank and her family lived in the house they left behind when they were deported to Poland.
In this article, we describe in detail how to visit the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam: presentation, history, tour, and how to buy your tickets.
Anne Frank’s story (1929-1945)
Photo credit: Wikimedia – Collectie Anne Frank Stichting Amsterdam
Anne Frank – born Annelies Marie Frank – was born on June 12, 1929 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Her father Otto Heinrich Frank (1889-1980) and mother Edith Frank-Holländer (1900-1945), Reform Jews, already had a first daughter named Margot (1926-1945). In 1933, after the Nazi party came to power, the family fled to Amsterdam to protect themselves from the anti-Semitic laws decreed by the dictatorial regime. In 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Holland: Anne Frank’s writings show the beginning of the hardships endured during the Nazi occupation and oppression. Refusing to submit to the Nazis, the family went into hiding in the « Annexe », the back office of Opekta (the company where Otto Frank worked): this was the beginning of their clandestine existence.
It was while listening to the Dutch government’s Minister of Education on the radio in London, calling for all diaries written during the Occupation to be collected after the war, in order to remember the horrors and suffering of the Dutch people and pay tribute to the millions of victims, that Anne Frank decided to rewrite her notes and turn them into a true story. On August 4, 1944, the Gestapo found and arrested the family, possibly on denunciation. They were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, then to Bergen-Belsen. The two sisters Anne and Margot – starving, suffering from typhus and too weak – died around March 1945, a month before the British liberated the camp on April 15, 1945. Only the father, Otto Frank, survived the camps.
A visit to Anne Frank’s house
Photo credit: Flickr – Marie Thérèse Hébert & Jean Robert Thibault
A visit to Anne Frank’s house reveals what life was like in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation. Entering the house where the Frank family lived, left abandoned after their departure, visitors will discover the maturing stages of Anne Frank’s writing, as well as living conditions during the Nazi Occupation. The Diary of Anne Frank was published at the instigation of Otto Frank – the only survivor of the family’s deportation – in June 1947, and translated into over 60 languages. It recounts the 25 months spent in hiding, concealed behind a bookcase.
The account details the difficulties and tensions between the two families forced to live together in a few square meters, the character of the house’s inhabitants, the eccentricity of each, the laughter and arguments, the bad rumors, the constant fear of being discovered and the horror experienced by entire Jewish families: arrests, separations, violence, deportations. The Diary of Anne Frank also describes her days in the Nazi concentration camp. In 1960, the house that had been saved from demolition was turned into a museum: although it is empty, visitors are nonetheless filled with emotion as they enter the premises.
If you choose the guided tour, you can visit Anne Frank’s house to learn about her life and that of her family, the horrors experienced by thousands of Jews during the war, and visit Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter. Visitors move from room to room, where photos, objects, posters and postcards hang on the walls. A visit to the Anne Frank Museum is not only a tribute to the Frank family, but also an invitation to take a stand against all forms of persecution and discrimination.
How to visit the Anne Frank Museum
Due to the large number of visitors, we recommend that you book your ticket at least two months in advance. For this, it’s best to book your ticket online, on the official website. A tour guide is available in six languages: English, Spanish, Dutch, French, Hebrew and Italian.
The museum rates are :
- Adults: €10,
- Children aged 10-17: €5,
- Children under 9: free,
- Electronic ticket surcharge: €0.50.
To buy your tickets, visit the official Anne Frank Museum website.
After your visit to the museum, take a guided tour of the Anne Frank district (€27.5).
The museum’s opening hours are :
- April 1 to November 1: daily, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m,
- November 1 to April 1: daily, 9 am to 7 pm,
- January 1st: from 12pm to 10pm,
- May 4: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m,
- June, July, August: 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m,
- September 18: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m,
- September 19: closed (Yom Kippur),
- November 3: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m,
- December 25 and 31: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
How to get to the Anne Frank Museum:
Access to the Anne Frank Museum is by streetcar, lines 13, 14 or 17, or by bus 170, 172 or 174: get off at the Westermarkt stop.