Anne Frank House, Amsterdam

Yesterday we went to the Anne Frank House (aka Anne Frank Huis) in Amsterdam (in the Jordaan area). We had booked our tickets on the Internet and printed them out which meant that instead of having to wait in the very long queue for admission we had an allocated time that we could turn up to a side door, ring the bell and be let in. Needless to say we thoroughly recommend this approach.

Photos are not allowed inside the house, so unfortunately I am unable do do a pictorial tour.

The self walking tour is very well done and contains lots of information is suitable bite size chunks in both written and audio form. Everything that was in Dutch of German was also translated into English.

The house was in fact bigger than I expected, although when you think that there were seven (I think) people living there, all of a sudden it is quite small.

Anne’s various diaries and other books are on display; I had never thought about her having more than one, but since the time period did span a number of years it is to be expected.

There was a very interesting interactive short film exhibit near the end of the tour that talked through various human rights situations and got people to vote for an answer. The collective vote results were then displayed, first showing the proportion for or against of people in the room, and then of all the people that had voted over time. It was interesting how varied the responses were. There was one question for which the audio asking the question differed from the words displayed, but other than that it was an excellent exhibit.

The entire visit was well worth it and thoroughly recommended. I will leave you with a photo looking from the doors pictured above out over the canal and the Westerkerk church that Anne heard chime (that is still chiming regularly today).