Jordaan Amsterdam: What Is Free Around The Westerkerk And The Anne Frank House

Part of the Free Things To Do In Amsterdam guides.

The Jordaan packs more free sightseeing into a few canal-side blocks than almost anywhere else in Amsterdam. The neighbourhood itself is the attraction: narrow streets, small bridges, the Noordermarkt, and a stretch of the Prinsengracht that includes two of the city's most written-about buildings, the Westerkerk and the Anne Frank House. One of those you can walk into for free, and one you cannot, and the difference between them is where most trip budgets go wrong.

The Westerkerk church interior is free to enter Monday to Friday from 11:00 to 15:00, September to June, with a donation suggested. Its famous tower is a different matter: it is closed to visits while restoration work runs, so no ticket exists to buy right now. The Anne Frank House next door is the opposite case, a paid museum with timed online tickets at EUR 16.50 for adults, EUR 7 for ages 10 to 17 and EUR 1 for ages 0 to 9, while the outside of the building is a public street you can stand on for nothing. Between those two poles sits the Homomonument, a free memorial, and the hofjes, the quiet courtyard almshouses scattered through the neighbourhood.

This guide walks the area cost by cost, then points to the free walking tours that cover the Anne Frank story and the wider Jordaan, all of them free, pay what you want, and reserved on GuruWalk.

What Can You Do In The Jordaan Without Paying?

Almost everything in the Jordaan that makes it the Jordaan is free: the streets, the canals, the Jordaan Neighbourhood Walk route, the Noordermarkt and Lindengracht Market squares, and the hofjes you are allowed to peek into. The two costs in the neighbourhood are the Anne Frank House ticket and any café or market stall spending, and the free Westerkerk church sits right between them.

The neighbourhood walk itself is a free activity in the fullest sense. The Jordaan Neighbourhood Walk is a record in its own right: an open walking route through public streets, no gate, no ticket, no opening time beyond the city's own rhythm. You can follow the canal ring from the Brouwersgracht down through the Egelantiersgracht to the Prinsengracht, cross at the Magere Brug-style small bridges, and end at the Noorderkerk, all on public ground. The Canal Ring as a whole is a UNESCO-listed landscape and costs nothing to look at, which is worth remembering when the paid canal cruises start at roughly EUR 29.75 in high season.

The Noordermarkt and the Lindengracht market are both free to browse, and they anchor the neighbourhood on two sides of the same square. Markets in Amsterdam are free to enter by definition; the cost is whatever you buy. The same logic applies to the Bloemenmarkt or the Albert Cuyp Market elsewhere in the city, covered in the free markets in Amsterdam guide, but in the Jordaan the Noordermarkt is the one on your route.

For anyone counting coins, the split looks like this.

One distinction worth holding onto: under-18s get free entry at the big museums in Amsterdam, including the Anne Frank House's own age bands where ages 0 to 9 pay only EUR 1 and ages 10 to 17 pay EUR 7. That free-under-18 rule applies to the museum ticket counters of the major museums, not to adults, and no card or pass converts an adult ticket into a free one. The Museumkaart and the I amsterdam City Card are paid products and never make a museum free; every big museum still requires a timed slot even with a pass.

When Is The Westerkerk Open To Walk Into?

The Westerkerk church interior is free to enter Monday to Friday from 11:00 to 15:00, September to June, with a donation suggested. Outside those months and hours the church is closed to visitors, and there is no ticket to buy for the interior at any time: it is free when it is open.

That schedule comes from the church's own page at westerkerk.nl, which is also where the tower closure is announced. September to June means the church is shut to visitors in July and August, a detail that catches summer travellers who assume a city church keeps city hours. The hours are also weekday-only: no Saturday or Sunday walk-in access is offered on the published schedule.

The donation box is the only money in the room, and it is genuinely optional. This makes the Westerkerk one of the free churches of Amsterdam, alongside the Noorderkerk, the Basilica of Saint Nicholas and the Krijtberg, in contrast to the Oude Kerk at EUR 14.50 and the Nieuwe Kerk at EUR 20, both of which are ticketed. The full list is in the free churches in Amsterdam guide, and the contrast matters: two churches within a ten-minute canal walk of each other sit on opposite sides of the free line.

The church's location is part of its value. It stands on the Prinsengracht beside the Anne Frank House, and the two buildings share a wall of history: the Westerkerk's bells are mentioned in Anne Frank's diary. You do not need a ticket to either building to stand between them, and the free Selfs Voice of the neighbourhood is the canal itself.

There is a second Westerkerk fact that visitors routinely get wrong, and it deserves its own section.

Why Can You Not Climb The Westerkerk Tower Right Now?

The Westerkerk tower is closed to all visits while restoration work runs, so there is no ticket, no time slot and no queue to join. The church's own site states it plainly: it is not possible to visit the tower at this moment. Anyone who budgeted for the climb or built a viewpoint stop around it needs a different plan.

The tower has long been one of Amsterdam's paid viewpoints, which is exactly why the closure trips people up: older articles, printed guides and word of mouth still describe buying a ticket and climbing to the platform. The operator's own page is the only source that reflects the restoration, and it says the tower cannot be visited. When it reopens, that page will say so; until then, treat every claim that you can climb it as out of date.

The free alternatives are not far. The free viewpoints in Amsterdam are a category of their own, covered in the free viewpoints in Amsterdam guide, and the nearest honest option to the Jordaan is across the water: the free ferries. The IJ ferries F1 to F7 are free for pedestrians and cyclists, the F3 runs 24 hours a day, and the crossing itself gives you the river panorama that the tower ticket used to sell. On the north bank the Eye Filmmuseum's foyer, bar and waterfront terrace are free to use, with only the films and exhibitions ticketed.

A paid contrast worth knowing about while you re-plan: the A'DAM Lookout across the IJ costs about EUR 16.50, roughly the price of an Anne Frank House adult ticket, and it is the commercial viewpoint the free ferry crossing competes with. The OBA Centrale Bibliotheek's rooftop terrace is free for the building but closes from November to March, so do not promise yourself that view in winter. The Munttoren and other tower experiences in the centre are their own records; the honest rule is simple: check the operator's page for any tower before you write it into an itinerary, because closures in this city are quiet and long.

What Does The Homomonument Mark?

The Homomonument is a free public memorial at the Westermarkt, beside the Westerkerk, marking the persecution of gay and lesbian people during the Second World War and the ongoing struggle for equal rights. It is open public space: no ticket, no gate, no guard, just three large pink granite triangles set into the pavement.

The monument sits directly across from the Westerkerk's main entrance, which makes it one of the easiest free sights in the neighbourhood to reach: walk out of the church's forecourt and you are standing on it. The pink triangle is the symbol taken from the badges prisoners were forced to wear in the camps, reclaimed here as a memorial marker. Because it is pavement-level rather than a fenced monument, visitors can walk across it, and the three triangles together point toward sites of specific meaning, including the Anne Frank House and the National Holocaust Names Monument in the Jewish quarter.

That connection matters for how you plan the area. The Homomonument, the Anne Frank House exterior, the Hollandsche Schouwburg and the National Holocaust Names Monument form a free circuit of memory across the centre, of which only the Anne Frank House interior costs money. The Hollandsche Schouwburg is free to enter, open almost every day from 10:00 to 17:00, no ticket needed. The National Holocaust Names Monument is a memorial you walk through on the street. The Jewish quarter and Plantage free memorials guide covers that side of the city in full.

The Side Walks Orientation Walk, a Spanish-language GuruWalk walk rated 4.86 out of 5 across 231 GuruWalk reviews, also meets at the Homomonument, Westermarkt, and runs 2 hours through the canals, Jordaan and Golden Age category. Every walk listed here is free, pay what you want, and reserved on GuruWalk; this site is independent of GuruWalk and earns a referral fee when you reserve through its links, and each walk is run by an independent local guide.

Do You Need A Ticket To Stand Outside The Anne Frank House?

No. The outside of the Anne Frank House, the canal facade and the Westerkerk-side wall, is a public street, and standing on the Prinsengracht beside it costs nothing. Only going inside requires a ticket: EUR 16.50 for adults, EUR 7 for ages 10 to 17 and EUR 1 for ages 0 to 9, sold as timed tickets online only.

The online-only rule is the part that catches people. The tickets page sells timed slots and there is no walk-up counter for same-day sales, so a decision to visit inside is a decision made in advance. The museum's own figures state the price bands plainly, and no free day or free evening exists at the Anne Frank House: the big museums in Amsterdam simply do not run free days, and any article promising one is wrong.

For visitors who only want the landmark, the free experience is real and not a consolation prize. The facade, the canal, the Westerkerk tower rising directly behind it and the queue-free street view are all public. The Anne Frank statue stands nearby. And the story itself is carried by several free walking tours, covered in a later section, which meet in the Plantage rather than at the house. More of these guides are collected on Free Things To Do In Amsterdam.

A quick cost comparison for the immediate block.

Which Hofjes Can You Peek Into?

The hofjes of the Jordaan are quiet residential courtyard almshouses that cost nothing to look into, with the condition that they are homes: you enter quietly, expect no tour, no group visit and no photography session, and you leave the residents in peace. They are among the few genuinely hidden free things left in the city centre.

A hofje is a courtyard surrounded by small houses, historically built as charity housing, and the Jordaan holds the densest cluster of them in Amsterdam. They are conditional free sights: the courtyards are opened to passers-by during the day and they close in the evening, and because people live in them the etiquette is strict. No group tours are the rule, and that rule is not a suggestion. Elsewhere in the city the parallel is the Begijnhof courtyard near the Spui, a residential courtyard free to walk through about 10:00 to 18:00, closed to visitors on King's Day, no group tours, kept quiet.

The contrast with the paid side of the neighbourhood is stark. A hofje costs nothing; the museum two canals over costs EUR 16.50; and the hofje asks something a museum does not, which is restraint. The free hidden gems in Amsterdam guide places the hofjes in the wider landscape of free courtyards, gates and passageways, several of which are open only a few hours a day.

One caution carried from the wider site: the Amsterdam Museum's main building on the Kalverstraat is closed for renovation until about 2029, and no free courtyard or passage access connected to it is confirmed, so do not build a plan around any gallery or courtyard attached to that building. The hofjes of the Jordaan are the reliable version of the experience.

Which Walk Covers The Anne Frank Story?

The FreeDam Anne Frank WWII Walk, a free, pay what you want GuruWalk walk, covers the Anne Frank story in English over 2 hours 30 minutes, meeting at the Hollandsche Schouwburg on the Plantage Middenlaan. It is rated 4.94 out of 5 across 176 GuruWalk reviews, and it needs no museum ticket.

The walk is run by FreeDam Tours, the same operator behind Absolutely Amsterdam, and it is the featured tour for this area of the city. Because it meets at the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a site that is itself free to enter almost every day from 10:00 to 17:00, the walk starts on free ground and tells the story the ticketed house tells, in the streets where it happened. Its GuruWalk page carries the meeting point and reservation; every walk on GuruWalk is free, pay what you want, and reserved there.

The Jewish Quarter Walk, 2 Hours, by Friendly Tours Amsterdam, covers the same history from a different starting point: it meets at Zwanenburgwal 15, in the Jewish quarter, and runs 2 hours in English, rated 4.9 out of 5 across 1,384 GuruWalk reviews. For Spanish speakers, Side Walks runs a Spanish WWII walk of 1 hour 45 minutes rated 4.89 out of 5 across 2,049 GuruWalk reviews, meeting at the National Holocaust Names Monument. Together they form the Anne Frank, Jewish Quarter and WWII family among the walks listed here, all on GuruWalk, all free, pay what you want.

For the Jordaan's other half, the canals and the Golden Age, the Trilingual Golden Age Walk runs 1 hour 45 minutes in English, French and Russian, meeting at the obelisk on Dam Square, rated 4.38 out of 5 across 21 GuruWalk reviews. It is a small-pool rating, and this site prints the count so you can judge it yourself.

Why Do Travellers Still Budget For A Closed Tower And A Free Church?

The two costliest planning mistakes in this neighbourhood are paying for a tower climb that is not running and assuming the church beside it charges. The Westerkerk tower is closed for restoration and sells no ticket; the Westerkerk church interior is free, donation suggested, on weekday afternoons from September to June. Getting these two backwards is the single most common budgeting error in the Jordaan.

The tower mistake persists because print guides age slowly. A decade of guidebooks says climb the Westerkerk, and the restoration says otherwise. The correction is free: the church's own page states the tower cannot be visited right now, so a visitor who checks it saves the money and the detour. The same discipline applies to every viewpoint in this city, where closures are long and announcements are quiet.

The second mistake is subtler: treating the whole Anne Frank block as a ticketed zone. It is not. The Homomonument, the Westerkerk interior, the street outside the Anne Frank House and the walk down the Prinsengracht are all free, and a visitor can spend a full afternoon on this block without spending a euro. The paid layer is thin: one museum ticket, one tower that cannot be climbed anyway, and whatever the market stalls sell you.

A closing note on how these walks work, because the question comes up constantly: every walk in this article is free, pay what you want, reserved on GuruWalk. That single fact is the whole mechanic. Anything else you want to know about a specific departure belongs on that walk's own GuruWalk page.

Common Questions About The Jordaan And Westerkerk Area