The Home of Vincent van Gogh 🎨: Netherlands

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There are many stories in the Netherlands that tell about the country's rich history, culture, and destinations. For example, Van Gogh and the Golden Age, but flowers and water are also closely related to the country's existence.

But flowers, windmills, and wooden shoes are what you can only think about Holland? What a shame! The country has so much more to offer! You can enjoy the bracing wind with a beach walk along the Dutch coast or a cycling tour of the Veluwe.

You can experience the welcoming hospitality of North Brabant and Limburg, the authentic charm of our Hanseatic cities and the Achterhoek in eastern Holland, and the freedom of the provinces of Friesland and Groningen with their wide horizons.

You can discover how the Dutch battle against the water in Flevoland, our newest province, and immerse yourself in Dutch culture in the modern metropolises, historic cities, and picturesque villages in the west of the Netherlands.

And best of all, you do not have to choose because all this and much more is within a two hour travel distance!

So start your engine on now:

1. Van Gogh Museum

The museum traces Van Gogh's lengendary life and artistic development via the world's largest collection of his work. There are more than 200 canvases on display, ranging from his early, bleak portraits of peasants in the Netherlands to his later years in sunny France, where he produced his best-known work with its characteristic giddy color.

2. Anne Frank Huis

Visiting Anne Frank House is one of Amsterdam's most profound experiences. Tragically, of the 107,000 Jewish adults and children deported from the Netherlands to concentration camps during WWII, only 5000 survived.

Entering the "Secret Annexe" where the teenaged girl and her family desperately hid from the Nazis for over two years until their capture puts the Holocaust's atrocities into acutely human scale, intimately personalizing the war's catastrophic effects.

Feeling how Anne and her family felt by standing in these sombre, airless rooms and viewing the diary Anne wrote while hiding here is impossible to forget.

3. Hermitage Amsterdam

There have been long-standing links between Russia and the Netherlands - Tsar Peter the Great learned shipbuilding here in 1697 - which is why there is a branch of St Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum.

Blockbuster temporary exhibitions show works from the Hermitage's vast treasure trove, while the permanent Portrait Gallery of the Golden Age has formal group portraits of the 17th-century Dutch A-list; the Outsider Gallery also has temporary shows. The Outsider Art Gallery is a place for outsider art artists to exhibit and sell their work or exchanges with galleries at home and abroad, and with other museums.