THREE WITH ONE STROKE

As her last public duty, Queen Beatrix officially opened the restored Rijksmuseum in April of this year. “Restored” is a lame description of what was accomplished in the 10 years it took to do the job. Anyone who remembers Amsterdam's most famous museum from over a decade ago will recall a confused jumble of whitewashed rooms divided on the ground floor into left and right, the museum itself a sort of brick arch astride a public road.

So visitors to Amsterdam for the XXXI ESCRS Congress which takes place from 5-9 October can look forward to a special treat. The road still runs through the Rijksmuseum; excavating under the road accounted for a large chunk of the €375m budget and much of the time. The new entrance is now below ground level where a dramatic concourse links the two sides of the building into an impressive whole.

The whitewash is gone too, the rooms painted in a rich charcoal that sets off the old masters that are the museum's strong suit. The ceilings and architectural details are again polychrome as they were in 1885 when the building was new. In an innovative presentation, furniture and decorative items are displayed in conjunction with the paintings. Some 30 of the 80 galleries are devoted to Netherlands’ Golden Age – the 17th century – while a new pavilion traces the links between the Netherlands and the Far East.

Rembrandt's Night Watch is still the museum's chief treasure (it now has its own trapdoor fire escape). A “Gallery of Honour,” including iconic paintings by Vermeer, lead you to it, a 30-minute immersion in fine art. Following the restoring, rehanging, and reworking, the museum expects to double its visitors from one to two million annually.

Judging by the queue on the day I visited I believe that's a modest estimate. An e-ticket, Museum Card or ticket bought from a concierge spares you from queuing at the ticket desk, but not from queuing for admission. If time is short, book yourself on one of the Museum tours. Tour ticket holders go right in. Book a tour online at: www.rijksmuseum.nl. The queue for the cloakroom can be daunting; don't carry anything bulky, you will be asked to check it.

VINCENT

The Van Gogh museum was closed for seven months and reopened two weeks after the Rijksmuseum. Its opening exhibition, “Vincent at Work,” introduces a Van Gogh we never knew – not the manic artist of legend, but a meticulous craftsman who enjoyed discussions with contemporaries like Lautrec and Gauguin, who worried about achieving correct perspective. We also learn that Van Gogh – who only sold two paintings in his lifetime – took the time to explore ideas about how to best frame and display his work.

The museum maps out the artist's way of working in a thoughtful presentation of 140 of his paintings, along with his letters and notebooks. Always on the edge of poverty, Van Gogh carried on in spite of it, sometimes painting on both sides of the canvas. The artist's last palette and the accompanying tubes of paint – crumpled by the artist’s own hand – seem to bring him right into the room.

Van Gogh's paintings are displayed against walls of blue, yellow or grey on the ground and first floors, along with 50 works by his contemporaries. The top floors present sketches, drawings and some of the scientific analysis that has, over eight years, revealed that the colours we associate with Vincent today are no more accurate than the character we attribute to him. Most importantly, the unstable red paint he used has faded; the white blossoms Van Gogh painted against the sky for his newborn nephew were originally pink. A new exhibit to be mounted in September hangs two versions of Vincent's Bedroom at Arles with its familiar pale blue walls. An accompanying digital reconstruction will reveal the composition with violet walls – as Van Gogh painted it.

For direct entry to the museum at a time of your choosing, buy your ticket online at: www.vangoghmuseum.nl.

THE STEDELIJK

Following a nineyear- long makeover, Amsterdam's redbrick contemporary museum has an inviting new entrance on the Museumplein. The glassfronted entry is tucked under a 100-metrelong overhang, a white fibre composite construction promptly and aptly nicknamed “the bathtub.” And why not? Duchamp's Fountain, a urinal, is one of the most influential pieces of modern art of all time.

Above ground, the new addition has a cafe at one end and huge bookshop at the other. Underground, the addition provides “Amsterdam's largest black box space” and room for video installations; upstairs there's expanded gallery capacity. The walls behind modern Masters like Matisse, Picasso, Mondrian and Chagall, are painted white. Compared to the warm-hued walls in the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh, this seems oddly old-fashioned.

The Beanery, a large-scale installation by Edward Kienholz, was meticulously restored while the museum was closed. Visitors enter this life-sized recreation of a celebrated Los Angeles eatery one at a time, to spend a moment with customers and barman, jukebox and menus, frozen in time one day in 1964. For details, visit: www.stedelijk.nl.

THE EYE

Amsterdam's newest museum, dedicated to films, seems to float on the water behind Central Station like a mammoth folded paper airplane. To reach The Eye, take a three-minute ride on a free ferry from the station followed by a threeminute walk. Once there, have a meal, watch a film, or simply enjoy the view of Amsterdam’s skyline from the bar/cafe/ restaurant. It’s open late, and the ferry runs around the clock seven days a week. Find out what’s on and more information about tickets at: www.eyefilm.nl.