Anne Frank House
The canal house at Prinsengracht 263 looks much like its neighbours — tall, narrow, large windows, dark brick — which is part of what makes standing in front of it so disorienting. Between July 1942 and August 1944, eight people lived concealed in the annex behind this façade, in roughly 42 square metres, while the city went about its business a few walls away.
The rooms of the Secret Annex are left unfurnished, as Otto Frank requested when the museum opened in 1960. What remains are the wall marks: pencil lines tracking the children's heights, magazine pictures Anne pasted above her desk, the map where Otto followed Allied troop movements. These details do more than any exhibit could.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who come back tend to say the same thing: book the earliest slot you can get. The 9 am entry is noticeably quieter, and the steep stairs between floors feel less fraught when you're not navigating a crowd. The café overlooking the Prinsengracht is worth sitting in after — it takes a moment to re-enter the day.
Deals in Anne Frank House
Book directly at the providerHow Anne Frank House came to be
The canal house dates to 1635, built by Dirk van Delft. The annex structure behind it was added in 1739. Otto Frank, who had moved his family from Germany to Amsterdam to escape Nazi persecution, relocated his companies — Opekta and Pectacon — to Prinsengracht 263 in December 1940. When his daughter Margot received a labour-camp call-up in July 1942, the family moved into the prepared hiding space the following day, joined eventually by four others.
The raid came on 4 August 1944. Otto Frank was the only one of the eight to survive Auschwitz, returning in June 1945. Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl, who had helped sustain the hiding families, recovered Anne's papers from the annex after the arrest. The diary was published in 1947. The Anne Frank House organisation was established in 1957 — the same year the building was donated to it — and the museum opened 3 May 1960.
Who and what shaped it
People who shaped it
Landmark buildings
Plan your visit
On the map
When to go
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.