The Rijksmuseum Gardens, in five minutes
An overlooked public garden between the museum and the Singelgracht.
The gardens are free, open during museum hours, and almost always uncrowded. They are also, by my reckoning, the most underrated public space in this part of Amsterdam.
There are four small garden rooms, each with its own personality. One is formal — clipped boxwood, a quiet fountain. One has architectural fragments from demolished buildings scattered like sculpture. One is a kitchen garden in the season. The fourth is a long path of pleached hornbeams that I find myself walking even on rainy days.
I do not know whether the gardens were intended as a kind of waiting room for visitors before they entered the building. They function as one. They also function as a destination of their own. On a warm Thursday in May they are full of art students sketching and elderly couples reading newspapers.
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