Museumplein in a morning

Get there before nine and Museumplein still belongs to the neighbourhood: dog walkers cutting across the lawn, a few cyclists using it as a shortcut, the Rijksmuseum's facade lit low and gold. By ten the square starts filling with the museum queues it's actually built for, so an early start is less a scheduling trick than the whole point.

Three museums around a lawn

The square is really three museums wrapped around a lawn. The Rijksmuseum anchors the east end with Dutch Golden Age painting, the Van Gogh Museum sits opposite with the largest Van Gogh collection anywhere, and the Stedelijk Museum covers modern and contemporary art in the boxy white building at the far side. Pick one. Trying to do all three in a morning turns the visit into a sprint through corridors, not a look at anything.

Between museums, the lawn itself is worth ten minutes. It's where locals actually use the square: a picnic blanket, a paperback, someone practising an instrument badly. In winter the pond in front of the Rijksmuseum becomes an ice rink; in summer it's open water and the square turns into a loose kind of festival ground.

Where to stop for coffee

• Café Restaurant Sandberg, right on the square at Museumplein 10, open early for breakfast and known for bread baked on site.
• The Garden House, tucked into the Rijksmuseum's garden: a quiet spot for a coffee among sculpture if you want a break that doesn't feel like leaving the museum.
• Fonda Café, on the first floor of the Stedelijk. Needs a museum ticket to reach, but it's one of the better-kept secrets on the square.
• MINA Gallery Cafe, a few steps off the square, doubles as a small contemporary art gallery. Useful if you want a coffee that isn't inside a queue.

What to keep an eye out for

Museumplein changes personality with the season more than most squares. Sundays regularly bring the Museum Market, a small market of arts, crafts and food set up right on the square. Later in the year the pond freezes over, or gets frozen for you, for Ice*Amsterdam, with a Christmas market alongside it. In summer, keep an eye on the square's events calendar through I amsterdam's culture guide: concerts, open-air screenings and one-off festivals tend to land on that lawn with only a few weeks' notice.

How to get there

Fifteen minutes on foot, and the walk is the pleasant part: west along Ceintuurbaan, right up Ferdinand Bolstraat, and over the Boerenwetering into the back of the square. On the tram it is tram 12 westbound from the Ceintuurbaan stop, three minutes from the hotel, and off at Museumplein. On a bike it is six or seven minutes and there is racking at the north end of the square.

The honest version of "a morning at Museumplein": arrive early, pick one museum, sit on the grass for ten minutes you didn't plan for, and let the coffee stop be the reason you slow down.