Even on a tight schedule, Rijksmuseum earns the hours.
Allow 2.5–4 hours.
World-class and genuinely overwhelming in the best way — but the taste call is which rooms reward you. Spectacle-seekers should make straight for the Gallery of Honour and the Night Watch; anyone who hates crowds should skip that hall at midday and instead linger in the near-empty upper medieval and 18th-century floors, where the intimate Vermeers and the dolls' houses repay a slow eye. The catch: it's vast, the Night Watch is mobbed shoulder-to-shoulder, and a half-hearted hour here is wasted money.