Anne Frank Huis

The Anne Frank House: The Hardest Museum Ticket to Get in Amsterdam

The Anne Frank House receives around one million visitors per year in a building on Prinsengracht 263 that is genuinely small. To manage this demand, the house releases tickets every Tuesday at 10am Amsterdam time for dates six weeks later – a rolling six-week window. Tickets are available only through the official website at annefrank.org. There are no walk-up tickets, no last-minute availability, and no way in without a pre-booked timed entry. During peak season (March through October), Tuesday’s release typically sells out within a few hours of going live. Adult tickets cost 16.50 euros; children aged 10-17 are 7 euros; under-10s pay 1 euro.

Set the calendar reminder now. If you miss the Tuesday release for your target date, check back frequently – cancellations occasionally free up slots. You cannot buy your way in through a reseller or tour operator; tickets are sold only through the official site and since October 2025 are nominative, meaning they are linked to the purchaser.

The Building

The Anne Frank House is at Prinsengracht 263 and consists of two connected structures: the front house where Otto Frank’s spice business operated, and the Secret Annex behind it, concealed behind a movable bookcase on the third floor. From July 1942 to August 1944, eight people lived in the annex: the Frank family of four, the van Pels family of three, and a dentist named Fritz Pfeffer. Anne was 13 when she went into hiding; she was 15 when arrested. She died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in February 1945, approximately two months before the camp was liberated. Of the eight in hiding, only Otto Frank survived.

Per Otto Frank’s wishes, the annex is unfurnished. The emptiness is deliberate and it does exactly what it is intended to do. The wallpaper above Anne’s bed, which she covered with photographs of film stars and royalty cut from magazines, has been preserved. The marks on the doorframe where the children’s heights were recorded are still there. These specific details – so ordinary, so ordinary – do the emotional work that no exhibit panel can fully replicate.

The original diary entries are displayed in a climate-controlled case. Photography inside the museum is restricted to maintain the atmosphere; the building does not need competition from phones.

What to Do With the Visit

Read the diary before you go. Not because you need to; because the experience of being in that narrow, lightless space while knowing Anne’s voice from the diary creates a connection that visiting without that preparation cannot provide. The visit takes 1.5 to 2 hours.

The Westerkerk immediately adjacent is the church whose bells Anne could hear from the annex and wrote about in the diary. Climbing the bell tower (separate ticket) gives a view of the neighbourhood and some understanding of the physical proximity of safety and danger in 1942 Amsterdam.

The Jordaan Neighbourhood

The house is in the Jordaan, Amsterdam’s most characterful residential quarter: narrow canals, independent shops, 17th-century architecture, and the density of good cafes and restaurants that makes Dutch cities genuinely pleasant to eat in. Spend the remaining day in the Jordaan rather than rushing to the next monument.