Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

The Stedelijk is the third great museum on Museumplein, and for anyone who loves twentieth-century art and design it is every bit as rewarding as its famous neighbours, with far fewer crowds. The museum opened in 1895 in a red-brick, Dutch Renaissance-style building, and in 2012 it reopened after a long renovation with a dramatic new wing designed by Benthem Crouwel Architects: a smooth white composite volume that floats over a glass ground floor and is universally known in Amsterdam as the bathtub. The main entrance now faces Museumplein, between the Van Gogh Museum and the Concertgebouw. Inside, the collection runs from around 1880 to the present day and mixes painting, sculpture, photography, film and design in a way few museums do. Its pillars are the Dutch avant-garde and the international modernists: Piet Mondrian and the De Stijl movement, Gerrit Rietveld's famous chairs, the largest collection of Kazimir Malevich's work outside Russia, and the explosive post-war paintings of the CoBrA group, with Karel Appel to the fore. Willem de Kooning, the Dutch-born giant of American Abstract Expressionism, is well represented, as are Pop and minimal artists. A favourite with visitors is Henri Matisse's The Parakeet and the Mermaid, a vast paper cut-out that fills a whole wall. The design galleries, with furniture, posters and graphic design, are a highlight in their own right. Major temporary exhibitions fill the bathtub, so check what is on, and allow time for the shop and the restaurant with its terrace on the square.

Why go: if the Rijksmuseum is the Golden Age and the Van Gogh Museum is one extraordinary life, the Stedelijk is the story of how art changed in the twentieth century, told with great confidence. The permanent collection presentation moves broadly chronologically, from Cézanne, Van Gogh and the early modernists through De Stijl, the Bauhaus and the Russian avant-garde, to post-war abstraction, Pop, conceptual art and contemporary work. The Dutch thread is particularly strong: seeing Mondrian evolve from landscapes towards pure grids, and Rietveld's Red Blue Chair in the flesh, makes sense of a design culture you will notice all over the Netherlands. The museum also has an important collection of graphic design and posters, and its contemporary programme regularly brings big-name international artists to Amsterdam.

Visiting well: the Stedelijk is open every day, and it is rarely as busy as its neighbours, so you can often book a ticket the same day, although timed slots for blockbuster exhibitions are worth reserving. Children and teenagers enter free. A free audio guide is offered with entry and is worth taking for the permanent collection. Lifts connect all floors, the galleries are spacious and well lit, and the building is fully accessible. Start in the basement and lower floors for the collection, then go up into the bathtub for the temporary shows, or reverse the order if the exhibition is what brought you. The café and restaurant spill out onto Museumplein in warm weather and make a good break between museums.

Around the museum: you are in the heart of the Museum Quarter. The Van Gogh Museum is literally next door, the Rijksmuseum is across the lawn, the Moco Museum sits between them in a 1904 villa, and the Concertgebouw closes the end of the square, with free lunchtime concerts on some days outside summer. The Vondelpark is a short walk west, and the elegant shopping street of the P.C. Hooftstraat runs along the north side. A sensible plan for art lovers is Van Gogh in the morning and the Stedelijk in the afternoon, when the square quietens and the light through the glass entrance hall is lovely. Trams from Centraal and Leidseplein stop a few minutes away.