Amsterdam vs Berlin: which free-spirited European city should you visit first?

24.06.2024 - 22:54 / lonelyplanet.com

Jun 24, 2024 • 7 min read

Planning a European city break but struggling to choose between Amsterdam and Berlin? 

Both of these capital cities have so much to offer – historically significant sites, streets and museums full of cutting-edge art and classic masterpieces, and nightlife that can keep you dancing well into the following day – but each with their own unique spin. 

Here, two Lonely Planet writers put forward their case for why their favorite city should be your top choice too.

Over two decades writing for Lonely Planet, Catherine Le Nevez has authored numerous guides to the Netherlands and Pocket Amsterdam, and while she’s also covered Germany many times, it’s Amsterdam that completely steals her heart.

For me, Amsterdam is the better option for a vacation and here’s the biggest reason why: at a quarter of Berlin’s size, in Amsterdam it’s distilled into a concentrated space. Cozy, intimate and full of charm, with its narrow streets, canals and candlelit bruin café (a traditional Dutch pub) – and <1 million population made up of 180 nationalities – it feels like a global village.  

Yet this is also one of the world’s great cities. Amsterdam is infused with history (in 2025, it celebrates 750 years since this “dam built across the Amstel” was granted toll-free status, springboarding it to become a seafaring superpower) and awash with legacies like its 17th-century canal ring (a UNESCO World Heritage site, as are Amsterdam’s surrounding forts, dikes and polders that form the ingenious Dutch Water Defence Lines). Though the city remained largely intact after WWII, poignant reminders include the profoundly moving Anne Frank Huis.

Amsterdam still has echoes too of its place as Europe’s counterculture magisch centrum (“magical center”) in the late 1960s/early 1970s, when legendary nightlife venues like Melkweg (a former dairy) and Paradiso (a 19th-century church) were reborn, and its open-mindedness and free-spiritedness permeate through the city. Sure, Berlin’s clubbing is amazing, but Amsterdam – the first city in the world to appoint a dedicated “night mayor” – has an epic EDM scene, with 24-hour venues like Radion and a phenomenal festival line-up that includes the zeitgeist-defining Amsterdam Open Air and ADE (Amsterdam Dance Event), not to mention the world’s first electronic music museum, Our House. (There’s no shortage of other music venues, including the glorious concert hall the Concertgebouw, snazzy Muziekgebouw, and Dutch National Opera & Ballet.)

Then there’s Amsterdam’s incredible trove of art, from Rembrandt’s former home and studio and his masterpieces at the Rijksmuseum at Museumplein, alongside the Van Gogh Museum. Not only historic, art is in overdrive in this hypercreative environment.