Located on the banks of the Amstel and Schinkel rivers and the IJ bay, Amsterdam is the capital city and most populous city of the Netherlands. As of 2006, Amsterdam 743,027, with 1,021,870 people living in the metropolitan area.

Amsterdam is of course famous for its system of concentric canals, which is a result of 17th century city planning. There are four main concentric half-circles of canals, with ther ends resting on the IJ bay,

There are many places to see in Amsterdam, but perhaps the most moving place to visit is 263 Prinsengracht, and the museum at 265 to 267 Prinsengracht, better known as the "Anne Frank House". This is where the Jewish diarist, Anne Frankhid with her family and four friends to escape Nazi persecution between 1942 and 1944, during the German occupation of the Netherlands. Sadly after two years in hiding, the group was betrayed, and taken to concentration camps, where all died with the exception of Anne Frank's father, Otto Frank.

There are a number of other museums in Amsterdam that you will want to see including the Rijksmuseum (arts, crafts and history), the Stedelijk Museum (modern art), and the Rembrandt House Museum (Dutch: Museum het Rembrandthuis), which is the house where the famous painter, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, usually simply known as "Rembrandt", lived and worked for a number of years. You will also surely want to visit the Van Gogh Museum, a museum dedicated to the 19th century Dutch painter, Vincent van Gogh (and his artistic contemporaries), which has the largest collection of van Gogh's paintings and drawings in the world.