Where to Stay in Amsterdam: Our Favourite Canal Houses

2026-08-20 · By April Windsor

In: Travel Guides

Amsterdam does not really do hotel towers. The places worth staying are the canal houses, and these are the two we keep going back to: the Dylan, forty-one rooms on the Keizersgracht built on the ground of the city's first stone theatre, and the Pulitzer, twenty-five houses knitted into a single hotel you get lost in on purpose. Ten minutes apart on foot, and nothing like each other.

THE DYLAN AMSTERDAM

The smallest of the three and the most theatrical, which is fitting. Jacob van Campen, who went on to build the Royal Palace on the Dam, raised Amsterdam's first stone city theatre on this ground in 1637; it opened the following January with a Vondel play. The theatre is long gone but Van Campen's stone gate survived and still fronts the brick courtyard, carrying its line about the world being a stage on which everyone plays his part.

Behind it sit forty-one rooms on the Keizersgracht, redrawn by Studio Linse to a brief Paul Linse summed up as no marble and no gold, just materials that speak for themselves. The detail is quiet and good: a B&O system, an Illy machine, Aesop in the bathroom, and a FreshBed, the Dutch climate-controlled bed that runs filtered air through the mattress and holds each side at its own temperature. Vinkeles, in the eighteenth-century bakery with the old oven still in the room, holds two Michelin stars under Jurgen van der Zalm; OCCO handles the rest of the day. Best of all is turndown, which comes with a Van Stapele cookie, dark chocolate with a white chocolate heart, the one thing that tiny Rokin bakery has made since 2013 and the one thing people queue for. dylanamsterdam.com

PULITZER AMSTERDAM

Twenty-five canal houses, seventeenth and eighteenth century, knitted into a single hotel that runs between the Prinsengracht and the Keizersgracht. Peter Pulitzer, grandson of the Joseph Pulitzer, bought the first twelve in 1970 and spent thirty years buying the rest. The result is a building you get lost in on purpose: 223 rooms, no two the same, original beams and carved fireplaces left where they were found.

Jacu Strauss reworked the whole thing for Lore Group in 2016 and gave it the wit it now runs on. Ask for one of the Collector's Suites, each imagined for a former resident with a private canal-side door of its own, the Book Collector's shelves heavy with Pulitzer Prize winners. Jansz. does modern Dutch cooking with its own street entrance in the Nine Streets, Pulitzer's Bar pours art deco cocktails by the fire, and the courtyard, planted by Copijn and far larger than anything you expect to find behind a canal facade, is where the hotel finally exhales. Pulitzer Garden serves out into it from breakfast until late, and breakfast is the meal to be there for: the croissants are the best argument for staying in on a grey Amsterdam morning. Flowers run through the whole place, great loose arrangements on the landings and by the stairs, changed often enough that the house never looks the same twice. pulitzeramsterdam.com

OTHER PROPERTIES YOU MAY LOVE

The Hoxton takes five seventeenth-century houses on the Herengracht and runs them straight through the block, so the hotel faces one canal at the front and the Singel at the back. A mayor lived here once. The 111 rooms start genuinely small at the Shoebox end, and the lobby works as a living room in a way the grander houses never attempt. Lotti’s handles European comfort food at street level, Up Top pours cocktails on the mezzanine up a spiral stair. This is the relaxed one. thehoxton.com

The Waldorf Astoria is six canal palaces in an unbroken row further along the Herengracht, the oldest of them from 1665, joined by a Louis XIV staircase attributed to Daniel Marot. Ninety-three rooms face either the water or the courtyard, which the hotel calls the largest private garden in Amsterdam, and the Guerlain spa was the first in the Benelux. Spectrum, the two-star restaurant, closed in 2026; for now Goldfinch and the Vault Bar, set in the building’s old bank vault, carry the evening. hilton.com

Take the Dylan for the quiet and the Pulitzer for the labyrinth. Or take both, and walk the ten minutes between them.

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