Sixteen days in the Netherlands and Belgium: seven towns and never a car

The oldest building in Amsterdam, consecrated in 1306 and standing in the middle of the red light district, which makes for a strange five minutes on the way in. The wooden barrel vault is medieval and the floor is made entirely of gravestones, one of which is Rembrandt's wife.

A complete Catholic church built into the top three floors of a canal house in 1663, when Catholic worship was banned in public but tolerated behind a front door. Two storeys of gallery, an organ, and a staircase you would not guess at from the street.

West across the canals is a grid of small streets with small kitchens and no chains. Sit down by half past seven; Dutch kitchens stop early and mean it.

Eight hundred years of Dutch art in a building that is itself an argument for coming. The Gallery of Honour runs Hals, Steen and Vermeer up to The Night Watch of 1642, a militia portrait cut down in 1715 to fit between two doorways in the town hall.

Two streets east and the prices halve. The Pijp is where the city actually eats: Surinamese roti, Turkish bakeries, and a lot of it eaten standing up.

Roughly two hundred paintings and five hundred drawings hung in order, so the colour shifts from Dutch brown to southern yellow as you climb the building. Timed entry, online only, and the last slot of the day is the calmest.

The city's main park, immediately west of the museums, with an open air theatre in summer and every spare Amsterdammer on the grass the moment the cloud breaks. Walk the whole length rather than stopping at the first lawn.

The canal house where eight people hid for just over two years behind a hinged bookcase. It was stripped bare on Otto Frank's instruction and stayed that way: no furniture, the original diary in a case, the rooms as they were found. An hour, and the queue on the way out is silent.

Built between 1620 and 1631 and still the tallest church tower in Amsterdam at 85 metres, topped with the crown of Maximilian. Rembrandt is buried inside in a pauper's grave nobody can now locate. The tower is climbed by guided tour only and the groups are small.

The streets north of the church are full of brown cafes doing proper lunches at ordinary prices, most with three tables on the pavement.

The house Rembrandt bought in 1639 at the height of his success and was forced to sell in 1656 when he went bankrupt. The inventory drawn up by the receivers was so detailed that the rooms have been put back exactly, down to the shells and armour he collected. Printmaking demonstrations most days.

About an hour with a change or direct depending on the hour, several an hour either way. Delft's station is a modern underground box; walk north and you are in the fifteenth century in five minutes.

The church on the Markt, begun in 1381 and finished in 1496, holding the tomb of William of Orange and the burial vault of every Dutch monarch since. The tower is 108 metres, the second tallest in the country, and 376 steps up.

Delft's older church, begun in 1246, with a brick tower nearly two metres out of true and leaning visibly over the canal. Vermeer is buried here, as is Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who was the executor of Vermeer's estate and the first person to see bacteria.

A former convent that became William of Orange's residence, and where he was shot on the staircase in 1584 by Balthasar Gérard. The bullet holes are still in the wall and the museum around them covers the revolt against Spain and the birth of the republic.

A tree-covered square of terraces two minutes from the Markt, busy in all weathers and much less touristy than the main square.

A seventeenth century town palace on the water holding Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring and View of Delft, Rembrandt's anatomy lesson and Fabritius's goldfinch. It is small enough to see properly in two hours, which is what makes it the best gallery in the country.

A courtyard of buildings around a thirteenth century great hall that has been the seat of Dutch government almost continuously since. The whole complex is midway through a full renovation with parliament sitting elsewhere, so the interest is the exterior and the Hofvijver pond in front of it.

The square immediately behind the parliament is ringed with terraces that feed civil servants and journalists, which keeps the standard up and the prices reasonable.

A former royal palace given over entirely to M C Escher: the impossible staircases, the tessellations and the lithographic stones he cut them on. The chandeliers were designed by a contemporary artist and are worth looking up at.

Around an hour from Delft, changing at Rotterdam or Gouda depending on the service. Utrecht Centraal is the busiest station in the country and is buried under a shopping centre; follow the signs to the Dom.

At 112 metres the tallest church tower in the Netherlands, finished in 1382 and standing detached from its own cathedral since the storm of 1674 took down everything between them. The climb is 465 steps by guided tour and the carillon is on the way up.

What is left of the cathedral: a Gothic choir and transept begun in 1254, with a cloister and garden alongside. The line of the vanished nave is marked in the paving of the square outside, which is how you grasp how big the whole thing was.

The best of the bridges over the Oudegracht, vaulted in 1547 between two older crossings. Stand on it and look down: the canal runs a full storey below the street with medieval cellars opening straight onto the quay, most of them now cafes.

Book a table on the Oudegracht wharves rather than at street level. You eat below the traffic with the water at your elbow and it costs no more.

Carillons, musical boxes, pianolas, fairground organs and a violin-playing machine, all in working order and all played by the guide on a compulsory tour. It is far better than the description suggests and children are transfixed.

The oldest municipal museum in the country, holding the largest collection of Rietveld furniture anywhere, a strong group of Utrecht Caravaggisti and a twelfth century ship dug out of the mud. It also sells the combined ticket for the Rietveld house.

The streets around the museum quarter are quiet and residential, with a couple of good bakeries. Otherwise walk back to the Oudegracht.

Built in 1924 to Gerrit Rietveld's design for Truus Schröder, who lived in it until 1985: sliding partitions instead of walls upstairs, primary colours, and no room that stays the same shape all day. Guided tour only, small groups, and it must be booked in advance.

Around two hours direct from Utrecht, roughly hourly. The last half hour runs down the Meuse valley through Limburg, which is the only part of the Netherlands with a horizon that goes up.

The big square in the middle of the old town, with the basilica and the church of St John on one side and a full line of terraces on the other. It is where the city eats outdoors from March to October and where the carnival ends up in February.

Built over the grave of Servatius, the first bishop in the Low Countries, who died here in 384. The present church is eleventh century Romanesque with a treasury holding his reliquary and pastoral staff, and a crypt you can go down into.

A thirteenth century Dominican church that spent time as a bicycle store and is now a bookshop, with a black steel stack of shelving three storeys high inserted down the nave and a cafe in the apse. Go up the stairs and look back down the vault.

A small bar with over a hundred and fifty Belgian and Dutch beers and an owner who will find you one whether or not you asked. Opening hours are approximate and the humour is dry.

An eleventh century Romanesque basilica with a fortress-like west front, known to everyone as the Star of the Sea after the statue of the Virgin in the side chapel. That chapel is open to the street and lit by hundreds of candles left by people passing.

The thirteenth century wall along the south of the old town, including the Helpoort of about 1229, the oldest surviving city gate in the Netherlands. The walk along it takes twenty minutes and comes out in a park by the river.

The little river inside the walls has mills, a park and a couple of terraces on it. This is the quiet quarter of Maastricht and the best place to sit down before going underground.

Over twenty thousand passages cut into the marlstone of the Sint-Pietersberg across two thousand years of quarrying, used as a refuge during sieges and as a hiding place for artworks during the Second World War. Guided tours only, the temperature is about ten degrees all year, and bring a jacket.

Roughly two hours, changing at Liège-Guillemins, which is a Calatrava station of glass and white steel and worth the connection time. Buy an international ticket; the Dutch contactless system stops at the border.

Gilded baroque guild houses on three sides, a Gothic town hall with a 96 metre spire on the fourth, and a trade emblem carved on every facade: a boat, a wolf, a swan. Rebuilt at speed after the French bombardment of 1695, and best seen floodlit after dinner.

A half-metre bronze boy on a street corner two minutes away, usually dressed: the city keeps hundreds of costumes for him and changes them for saints' days and state visits. He is much smaller than you expect, and that is the joke.

A bar in an alley off the Grand-Place with a beer list running into four figures, which is more of a filing system than a menu. Loud, full of visitors, and still the easiest place in the city to try five styles in one sitting.

Avoid the alley of restaurants with photographic menus and men beckoning from the doorway, one street from the square. Walk ten minutes north to Sainte-Catherine instead, which is where the fish restaurants are.

The largest collection of Rene Magritte anywhere, arranged chronologically over three exhibition floors so you watch a commercial illustrator become the man who painted a pipe and denied it. Part of the royal fine arts complex and on a joint ticket with it.

Over a thousand instruments in the Old England building, an art nouveau department store of 1899 in black iron and glass. Headphones play each instrument as you stand in front of it. The rooftop cafe has the best free view over the lower city.

The museum cafes are decent and the terraced garden between them has steps to sit on. Otherwise the Sablon, ten minutes south, is where the antique dealers eat.

The last lambic brewery inside Brussels, working since 1900 with equipment that has barely changed and fermenting in open vats under the roof so the wild yeast of the Senne valley can get at it. The tour is self-guided, dusty, and ends with two glasses of something dry and startlingly sour.

About thirty five minutes from Brussels, several an hour. Gent-Sint-Pieters is two kilometres from the centre, so take tram 1 rather than walking with bags.

A plain enough exterior over an interior of Rubens, baroque marble and, in a side chapel with its own timed ticket, the van Eyck altarpiece of 1432: twelve panels that ended the Middle Ages in northern European painting. Book the slot before you leave Brussels.

Begun in 1313 and finished in 1380, built by the city to hold its own charters and ring its own bells rather than the church's. A lift covers most of the climb; the gallery at 66 metres has the view and the great bell is on the way up.

The medieval harbour: a row of guild houses on the west bank of the Leie, the grain weighers, the toll house and the free boatmen, each with its own gable. Look at it from the opposite quay, then come back after dark when the whole row is lit.

A bar the size of a front room behind the water, with two hundred genevers and several made in the back. They come out of the freezer filled to the brim, so the first sip happens without lifting the glass.

A moated stone castle built by Philip of Alsace in 1180 on the model of the crusader fortresses he had just seen, saved from demolition in 1885 after a spell as a cotton mill. The wall walk gives the best view of the city and the audio guide is unusually funny.

A museum of everyday Flemish life in a row of almshouses around a courtyard, built as a penance after a fourteenth century murder. Home films, wedding photographs, dance halls and funerals, and a cafe in the yard.

The lanes behind the castle do lunch as well as dinner and are far quieter at midday. Almost everything here is small and family run.

The city museum, in the fourteenth century Bijloke abbey twenty minutes south, telling Ghent's story from the abbey refectory outwards. The pre-Eyckian wall paintings in that refectory are the oldest thing on the route and are worth the walk on their own.

Twenty five minutes from Ghent, two or three an hour, no reservation. Brugge station is fifteen minutes' walk from the centre through the park where the ramparts used to be.

A hectare of square with the belfry on the south side, 83 metres and 366 steps up to a carillon of 47 bells still played by hand. Climb it early or not at all: the stair is single file and they cap the number allowed at the top.

Two churches stacked on the Burg: a bare Romanesque chapel of the twelfth century below, a rebuilt Gothic one above holding a rock crystal vial said to contain the blood of Christ. It is brought out for veneration at set hours and carried through the town every Ascension Day.

The last brewery still making beer inside the walls, which since 2016 pumps the finished product to its bottling plant through three kilometres of pipe laid under the streets rather than trucking it. The tour ends on a roof terrace with a glass in your hand.

The restaurants ringing the main square charge for the view. Walk five minutes north into the lanes around Sint-Jakobsstraat and the same money buys a much better plate.

A brick tower of 115 metres, the second tallest brickwork tower anywhere, over a church holding Michelangelo's Madonna and Child. A Bruges cloth merchant bought it in 1504 and it is the only sculpture of his that left Italy in his lifetime. Charles the Bold and Mary of Burgundy lie in the choir behind it.

A hospital that treated the sick for seven centuries, with the wards intact and six paintings by Hans Memling still in the building they were made for. The Shrine of St Ursula, a gilded reliquary painted like a miniature cathedral, is the one to stand in front of longest.

Six centuries of painting in a small museum, but two rooms are why anybody comes: van Eyck's Madonna with Canon van der Paele of 1436, painted with a precision nobody had managed before, and Gerard David's extremely uncomfortable Judgement of Cambyses.

The water east of the Burg, around the Groenerei and the Rozenhoedkaai, has benches and a couple of small kitchens. Chips from a friture and a bench beats a terrace with a view tax.

The oldest pub in Bruges, trading since 1515, with a stove, a garden at the back and no interest whatsoever in the tourist trade a hundred metres away. Cash is welcome and the beer list is short on purpose.

A walled court of whitewashed houses founded in 1245 for beguines, lay religious women living in community without permanent vows, and occupied by Benedictine nuns since 1927. Free, silent, and in March the entire lawn is daffodils.

About an hour and a quarter direct to Brussels Airport, or an hour to Brussels-Midi if you are catching the Eurostar. Buy at the machine; there is nothing to reserve.