Royal Palace Amsterdam

The Royal Palace on Dam Square is the grandest building in Amsterdam and one of the most rewarding, and often overlooked, visits in the centre. It was not built for royalty at all. In the middle of the seventeenth century, at the height of the Golden Age, the city commissioned the architect Jacob van Campen to design a new town hall that would announce Amsterdam's wealth to the world; construction began in 1648, on a foundation of thousands of wooden piles driven into the soft ground, and the building opened in 1655. Contemporaries called it the eighth wonder of the world. Its centrepiece, the Citizens' Hall, is one of the great rooms of Europe: a vast marble space where maps of the eastern and western hemispheres and a celestial map are inlaid into the floor, so that citizens could, quite literally, walk across the world their city traded with, under sculptures that place Amsterdam at the centre of the universe. In 1808, when the Netherlands was under French control, Louis Napoleon, brother of Napoleon Bonaparte and briefly King of Holland, turned the town hall into a royal palace, and the remarkable collection of Empire furniture he brought in is still there. Today the palace belongs to the State and is one of three palaces at the disposal of the Dutch monarch, used for state visits, royal receptions and award ceremonies; when it is not needed for these, it is open to the public. A free audio tour, included in the modest admission, explains the rooms, the symbolism and the history, and under-18s enter free. Because the palace closes for official functions, often at short notice, check the opening calendar before planning your visit.

What you see: after the Citizens' Hall, the route leads through the former courtrooms, council chambers and offices of the burgomasters, decorated with paintings by Rembrandt's pupils and contemporaries, and the Vierschaar, the marble tribunal on the ground floor where death sentences were pronounced, whose sculpted judges and grieving women make it one of the most unsettling rooms in the city. Upstairs, Louis Napoleon's Empire furnishings — chandeliers, clocks, beds and chairs — fill the former municipal rooms and give the palace its strange, layered character: a republican monument dressed up as a royal residence. Look out for the views over Dam Square from the windows, and the details carved into the marble, from rats in the bankruptcy chamber to the city's coat of arms. Children can follow a family audio tour, and the building is accessible by lift.

Dam Square itself is the city's main stage, and worth knowing before you go. It began as the dam on the Amstel river that gave Amsterdam its name, and it has been the site of markets, protests, celebrations and the national Remembrance Day ceremony on 4 May at the National Monument, the white stone pillar facing the palace, which commemorates the victims of the Second World War. Beside the palace stands the Nieuwe Kerk, the fifteenth-century church where Dutch monarchs are inaugurated, now used for major exhibitions, and across the square the department store De Bijenkorf and the start of the busy Kalverstraat and Damrak shopping streets. The square is crowded, noisy and full of pigeons and street performers, and few people linger, but it is the natural starting point for walks into the old centre, the canals and the Jordaan.

Visiting well: check the palace's opening calendar before you go, because it closes for state visits, royal receptions and preparations, sometimes for several days. Allow about an hour with the audio tour. Mornings are quietest. Combine the palace with the Nieuwe Kerk if an exhibition appeals, then walk west along the Raadhuisstraat to the canals, the Westerkerk and the Anne Frank House, or south through the Kalverstraat to the Begijnhof, a peaceful courtyard ten minutes away. If you have a Museumkaart, entry to the palace is included.