Three days in Utrecht: a canal with a second street underneath it

Two nights in the old centre, a canal you walk along below street level, and half an hour by train from Amsterdam.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Utrecht
Places
8 across 3 days
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Utrecht is what people expect Amsterdam to be, and it is twenty seven minutes away by train. The centre is medieval, the canal that runs through it has a second level of wharves and cellars below the street, and the whole thing is small enough to cross in twenty minutes.

It is also a student city, which keeps the prices honest and the terraces full on a Tuesday. The busiest railway station in the Netherlands is here, and almost nobody staying in Amsterdam gets off the train.

Three days gives you the old centre, the two museums worth crossing town for, and the pleasure of doing nothing beside the water. The Roman fort that started all this is buried under the square in front of the cathedral, which is a fair summary of how the city keeps its history.

Highlights

  • Climbing 112 metres of the Domtoren on a guided ticket, with the whole province laid out flat below
  • The Oudegracht wharves, where medieval cellars open straight onto the water and are now full of restaurant tables
  • The Rietveld Schröder House, built in 1924 and still the most radical small house in Europe
  • Mechanical organs and musical clocks played loudly, in a church that stopped being a church
  • A canal cafe on a Sunday morning, which is the entire point of the place

Where to stay

Utrecht, two nights

Stay inside the old moat, which is now a ring park, and nothing below needs transport. The area around the Oudegracht and Neude is the middle of it; Wittevrouwen and the streets east of the centre are quieter and full of cafes.

Rooms here are cheaper than Amsterdam and busiest when the trade fair is on, which is often. Book ahead and check the dates if the prices look strange.

Day by day

Day 1 in Utrecht

The Dom, the tower and the Oudegracht

One square holds most of the story. On 1 August 1674 a storm brought down the unfinished nave of the cathedral, leaving the tower on one side of the open ground and the choir on the other, and the city never rebuilt the middle.

Climb the tower for the shape of the country, look into the church for what is left of the cathedral, and then go down to the water. The wharves along the Oudegracht are the thing you will remember: a whole second street at canal level, cut in the 13th century so barges could unload straight into the cellars of the houses.

  1. 14:30

    Domtoren

    Religious

    112 metres and 465 steps, the tallest church tower in the Netherlands and by local law the tallest building in Utrecht. Climbs are guided only and go on the hour. On a clear day you can see Amsterdam.

  2. 16:00

    Dom van Utrecht

    Religious

    What survived the storm: a gothic choir and transept begun in 1254, plus a cloister garden that is one of the quietest corners in the city and free to walk into.

  3. 17:00

    Stadhuisbrug

    Architecture

    The broadest bridge on the Oudegracht, made in 1547 by vaulting over the gap between two older ones. Stand on it for the view along the canal, then take the steps down to the wharves and walk at water level.

  4. 19:00

    Dinner on the wharf

    Eat

    Tables on the water below the street, with the canal traffic going past your feet. Book at the weekend, and bring a layer, it is colder down there.

With more time: Under Domplein there is a guided walk through the excavated layers of the Roman fort the city grew out of, which takes an hour and is a good answer to rain.

Day 2 in Utrecht

The Centraal Museum, the Rietveld Schröder House and Wilhelminapark

Utrecht's contribution to the 20th century was De Stijl, and both ends of it are here: the museum with the world's largest collection of Gerrit Rietveld's furniture, and the house he built in 1924 for Truus Schröder, who wanted no fixed walls upstairs.

The two are about two kilometres apart and the museum runs a shuttle between them, so take the earlier ticket at the museum and the later one at the house. The park beside it is where the afternoon should end.

  1. 10:00

    Centraal Museum

    Culture

    The oldest municipal museum in the country: Utrecht painters, a medieval trading boat dug out of the mud, and rooms of Rietveld chairs and cabinets. The Miffy museum, for anybody travelling with small children, is directly across the street.

  2. 12:30

    Lunch in the museum quarter

    Eat

    The streets between the museum and the ring canal have plenty. Eat before you go over; there is nothing at all near the house.

  3. 14:00

    Rietveld Schröderhuis

    Historic

    A small house on the end of a terrace where the upstairs walls slide away into one room, built in 1924 and a World Heritage Site since 2000. Visits are guided, timed and capped at a handful of people. Truus Schröder lived here until 1985.

  4. 15:45

    Wilhelminapark

    Leisure

    Ten minutes' walk from the house, a 19th century park with a pond, a bandstand and half the neighbourhood on the grass whenever the sun is out. Walk back into town along the ring canal from here.

With more time: With more time, the railway museum a few streets north is genuinely good even if trains mean nothing to you: it is built into the old Maliebaan terminus and has the royal carriages and a steam roundhouse.

Day 3 in Utrecht

Mechanical music and a last walk along the canal

Save the strangest museum in Utrecht for the morning you leave. Nothing in it stays quiet: the guides wind up the street organs and the musical clocks and set them going, and an hour disappears.

Afterwards there is time to walk the length of the Oudegracht, which is fifteen minutes from the door to the station end.

  1. 10:00

    Museum Speelklok

    Culture

    Musical clocks, pianolas, fairground organs and a wall of street organs, in a medieval church that stopped holding services. The tours are hands on and loud, and they run in English.

  2. 12:00

    Broodje Mario

    Other

    A city institution: a hot Italian roll eaten standing up, for the price of a coffee elsewhere. The queue moves fast.

  3. 13:00

    Pieterskerk

    Religious

    Consecrated in 1048 and the oldest church in the city, with Romanesque pillars of red sandstone and a crypt. Opening hours are short and irregular, so look before you walk over.

With more time: If the sun is out and your train is late, rent a canoe on the Oudegracht instead of the last museum. An hour on the water under the bridges is the best thing you can do here for the money.

Before you go

Getting there and getting around

Trains run from Amsterdam Centraal roughly every ten minutes and take twenty seven minutes; Rotterdam and Schiphol are both about forty minutes. Utrecht Centraal is joined to a shopping centre, so the walk out of the station is longer than it looks, and the old town starts about ten minutes beyond it.

Once there, walk. Buses and trams take a contactless bank card, tapping in and out, but the centre is a fifteen minute square and the interesting parts are all inside it.

Two tickets to book

The Domtoren can only be climbed with a guide, in small groups, on tours that sell out in summer and in the weeks around Christmas. Book online before you travel.

The Rietveld Schröder House is also guided and timed, and visitor numbers are capped because the house is tiny. Tickets come through the Centraal Museum, which runs a shuttle over, and a combined ticket for both is the sensible buy.

Eating and drinking

The cellars at water level are the obvious place to eat, and worth doing once, though you pay for the view. The streets behind them, and the Twijnstraat and Voorstraat in particular, are where students eat.

Utrecht takes coffee and beer seriously and shuts its kitchens early, like the rest of the country. If you want dinner after nine, book it.

Utrecht is a city for looking down rather than up, once you have done the tower. The wharves, the cellars, the water traffic and the tables inches above it are the reason people who live in the Netherlands quietly prefer it to the capital.

Two nights is enough to stop treating it as a day trip. Three, with a canoe or a train out to a castle, is a proper short holiday.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Utrecht worth a trip if I am already going to Amsterdam?
Yes. It is twenty seven minutes by train, the canals have a level of wharves that Amsterdam does not, and the crowds are a fraction of the size. Plenty of people visit for a day; two nights lets you see it in the evening, which is when it is best.
How hard is the Dom tower climb?
465 steps on a narrow spiral staircase, with several stops on the way where the guide talks and you get your breath back. There is no lift. Anybody reasonably fit manages it, and the view covers most of the province.
Do I need to book the Rietveld Schröder House?
Yes, well ahead. Groups are small, visits are timed, and summer weekends go weeks in advance. Buy it together with the Centraal Museum ticket and use the shuttle between them.
Is three days too long for Utrecht?
Not if you use the third day loosely. The city itself is a comfortable two days; the third is for the museums you skipped, a canoe on the canal, or a train to Amersfoort or the castle at Haarzuilens, both under half an hour away.
When is it busiest?
Whenever the trade fair halls by the station have something on, which is most of the year and shows up in hotel prices rather than in the streets. The city itself is busiest on Saturday and during the student introduction week in August.