A wax-portrait attraction in a listed Dam Square department store. Opened in Amsterdam in 1970, it moved here in 1991; its present address stands where the square’s early twentieth-century retail expansion reshaped the city centre.
Quick facts
The Amsterdam attraction opened in Kalverstraat in 1970 and moved to Dam Square in 1991, according to the museum’s own history.
The building at Dam 20 was built in 1914–17 for clothing retailer Peek & Cloppenburg, designed by A.J. Joling, with sculpture by Kees Smout.
Amsterdam’s municipal archives date the Dam’s origin to a dam across the Amstel shortly before 1275; the original name was Middeldam.
Get directions to Madame Tussauds Amsterdam. Confirm the visitor entrance and current access with the venue before travelling.
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Madame Tussauds Amsterdam occupies a building that had already spent decades performing a different kind of display. Look at the broad shopfronts, stone galleries and sculpted façade: this was built for Peek & Cloppenburg, the clothing retailer, not for wax figures. The museum arrived in 1991, taking over a prominent corner of a square whose shape had been changing for centuries.
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