de Bijenkorf Amsterdam is at Dam 1, 1012 JS, on the east side of Dam Square, and it opens Monday 11:00 to 21:00, Tuesday to Saturday 10:00 to 21:00, and Sunday 10:00 to 20:00. Entry is free and there is no ticket. It is the flagship of a seven-store Dutch chain, a warenhuis founded in 1870, it sits in a listed 1914 building, and the two things most visitors actually come for are the beauty and designer floors and the Global Blue tax-refund lounge on the fourth floor, where non-EU shoppers who spend at least €50 in one day can be paid their VAT back on the spot. The store restaurant, the Kitchen, is on the fifth floor and keeps its own hours.
What time does de Bijenkorf Amsterdam open and close?
Monday is the odd one out: the store opens two hours later than the rest of the week. Every other weekday and Saturday it runs 10:00 to 21:00, and Sunday closes an hour earlier at 20:00. These are the hours de Bijenkorf publishes on its own Amsterdam store page (its openingstijden), checked on 14 August 2026.
| Day | Store opens | Store closes | Hours open |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 11:00 | 21:00 | 10 |
| Tuesday | 10:00 | 21:00 | 11 |
| Wednesday | 10:00 | 21:00 | 11 |
| Thursday | 10:00 | 21:00 | 11 |
| Friday | 10:00 | 21:00 | 11 |
| Saturday | 10:00 | 21:00 | 11 |
| Sunday | 10:00 | 20:00 | 10 |
Two corrections worth stating plainly, because this page carried both of them until today. The old version of this page said the store closed at 20:00 Monday to Saturday and did not open until 12:00 on Sunday. Both were wrong. If you had followed them you would have skipped a Sunday morning that the store is in fact open, and you would have left an hour early every other day of the week. Dutch searchers looking for bijenkorf amsterdam openingstijden were being given the same wrong timetable in English.
Public holidays move. de Bijenkorf keeps a national opening-hours page for all seven branches, and the Amsterdam store page carries a “more opening hours” link that covers holiday variations and the restaurant. Check it before travelling on King’s Day, Ascension, Whitsun or over Christmas, when Dutch retail hours change more than most visitors expect.
Where exactly is it, and which tram actually stops at Dam?
The store occupies the corner of Dam Square and the Damrak, directly opposite the Royal Palace. From Amsterdam Centraal it is a straight walk south down the Damrak, roughly ten minutes, and you cannot miss it: it is the large stone block on your left as the Damrak opens into the square. The Dam tram stop is split across two sides of the square, which matters if you are trying to work out which platform to stand on.
| Route | Detail | Time to the door |
|---|---|---|
| Walk from Amsterdam Centraal | South down the Damrak, past Beursplein and the Charging Bull | About 10 minutes |
| Tram 4, 14 or 24 | Dam stop, Rokin side of the square | 1 to 2 minutes on foot |
| Tram 2, 12, 13 or 17 | Dam stop, Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal side | 3 to 4 minutes across the square |
| Metro 52 | Rokin station, then north through the square | About 5 minutes |
| Tram 9, 16 or 25 | Not possible. These lines were withdrawn in the 2018 network revision and no longer exist | n/a |
Pay for the tram by tapping in and out with a contactless bank card or phone using OVpay, or buy a GVB travel ticket if you plan to ride a lot in one stretch. GVB 2026 prices for unlimited travel on trams, buses and the metro are €10.00 for 24 hours, €16.00 for 48 hours, €21.50 for 72 hours and €27.50 for 96 hours. For a single visit to Dam Square from the centre, walking is usually faster than waiting.
Does it cost anything to go in?
No. de Bijenkorf is a shop, not an attraction: there is no admission charge, no ticket and no queue system. You can walk in off Dam Square, ride to the fifth floor for the view from the restaurant, use the toilets and walk out again without buying anything. The only fixed costs attached to a visit are getting there and whatever you decide to spend inside.
How does the tax refund work for non-EU visitors?
Dutch VAT is 21 percent and it is already inside the price on the label. If you live outside the European Union and you are taking the goods home with you, you can claim it back. de Bijenkorf runs the scheme through Global Blue, and the Amsterdam store is the only branch with a dedicated Tax Refund Lounge, on the fourth floor, where self-service kiosks pay the refund up front rather than making you wait for it after you fly.
| Condition | What de Bijenkorf requires |
|---|---|
| Residency | Registered as living in a country outside the European Union |
| Minimum spend | €50 in one day |
| The goods | Must travel home with you |
| Deadline to leave the EU | Within three months after the month of purchase |
| Refund method | Cash in euros, or back to a credit card |
| Still required afterwards | A customs stamp or proof of export at your point of exit from the EU, on the day you leave |
That last line is the part people get wrong. Being paid immediately at the kiosk is not the end of the process. You still have to get the form validated at the airport or border on your departure day and return it to Global Blue, either at a refund point or by post in the envelope provided. de Bijenkorf states that if the Global Blue conditions are not met you will have to pay a fine, so the up-front payment is effectively an advance, not a settlement.
The seven Dutch branches do not all handle this the same way, and the difference is worth knowing before you decide where to shop.
| Branch | Where you go | When you get paid |
|---|---|---|
| Amsterdam | Tax Refund Lounge, fourth floor | Immediately, cash or card |
| Rotterdam, Den Haag | Customer Services | Immediately, cash or card |
| Amstelveen, Eindhoven, Maastricht, Utrecht | Customer Services, form printed only | After customs validation and return of the form |
Amsterdam also offers a Home Delivery service that the other branches do not: your purchases are shipped to your home address while you carry on travelling, registered through the same fourth-floor lounge. de Bijenkorf puts arrival at up to five weeks depending on destination, and the tax refund is paid only after the shipment has been delivered, which is three to five weeks. It solves a luggage problem and creates a waiting problem.
What is on which floor?
Two floor positions are fixed and published by the store itself: the Tax Refund Lounge is on the fourth floor and the Kitchen restaurant is on the fifth. Pop-ups move: recent ones have been sited on the parterre, which is Dutch for the ground floor, and on the third. Beyond that, floor-by-floor department lists go out of date faster than anyone updates them, so this page does not print one. The store’s own directory and the signage at the escalators are the reliable versions.
The previous version of this page claimed the store had six storeys in one sentence and five floors in the next. Neither figure was sourced and they contradicted each other, so both have been removed rather than one of them picked.
Is there somewhere to eat inside?
Yes, and it is one of the more useful things about the building. The Kitchen sits on the fifth floor, it is self-service rather than table service, and it does not take reservations, so it works as a walk-in stop in a part of town where almost everything at street level is booked out or aimed squarely at day-trippers. It has windows over the rooftops around Dam Square. Its hours are not the same as the store’s, and de Bijenkorf lists them separately, so check the store page rather than assuming the restaurant runs until 21:00.
Who founded de Bijenkorf, and how old is it?
de Bijenkorf was registered with the Chamber of Commerce on 23 March 1870 by Simon Philip Goudsmit, a Jewish Amsterdam merchant who died in 1889. The first shop was a haberdashery at Nieuwendijk 132, a few minutes north-west of where the store stands now, and for the first twenty years it sold only yarn and ribbon and employed four people. The name means “the beehive”. In 2025 the company marked its 155th year, which makes 2026 its 156th.
The expansion came after Goudsmit’s death. His nephew Arthur Isaac took the business on with Goudsmit’s widow, broadened the range, bought up neighbouring properties, and in 1909 decided to replace the patchwork of buildings with a single purpose-built store. The old version of this page named the founder as “Philip Simon Goudsmit”. The two given names are the other way round.
Who designed the building on the Dam?
Not Marcel Breuer. That is the single most repeated error about this store, and this page was repeating it too. The building at Dam 1 was built between 1911 and 1914 to a design by J.A. van Straaten jr., commissioned for the Bijenkorf board by Arthur Isaac. Van Straaten fell out with the directorate and was dismissed before completion; B.A. Lubbers finished the work, mainly the interior. The store opened its doors in September 1914 and the move from the Nieuwendijk was complete by 1915. In 1937 to 1938 the building was extended towards the Warmoesstraat by D. Brouwer, with an expedition area, extra selling space and a light court over the former exchange street. It is a rijksmonument, national monument number 518426: a concrete frame, modern for its date, wrapped in a natural-stone exterior in a neo-style that answers the Royal Palace and the Nieuwe Kerk across the square.
| de Bijenkorf Amsterdam | de Bijenkorf Rotterdam | |
|---|---|---|
| Architect | J.A. van Straaten jr., completed by B.A. Lubbers | Marcel Breuer, with A. Elzas |
| Built | 1911 to 1914, extended 1937 to 1938 | 1953 to 1957 |
| Look | Natural stone, neo-style, concrete frame | Honeycomb travertine facade, post-war modernist |
| Status | Rijksmonument 518426 | Post-war reconstruction landmark |
One detail inside is worth looking up for, and almost nothing written about the store mentions it. The store manager’s own note on de Bijenkorf’s Amsterdam page quotes the words on the big clock in the Amsterdam store: “Door alle tijden verbindt de Bijenkorf u met de productie der wereld”, which translates as “through all times de Bijenkorf connects you with the production of the world”. It is a department store from the era when a shop could describe itself as a link to global manufacturing and mean it as a promise.
What happened to the store during the occupation?
This is the part of the building’s history that the shopping guides leave out. de Bijenkorf was still a Jewish family firm when the Netherlands was invaded. In 1941 the German occupier removed the entire board and installed a German Verwalter, or administrator, Dr Paul Brandt. The Isaac family went into hiding. The company’s cultural-heritage archive and Joods Amsterdam record that 737 employees were murdered during the occupation, and that the business manager faced the choice of which fifty Jewish staff could escape with him by boat to England. The firm was rebuilt after the war by the Isaac family on their return.
If that history is what brings you to Dam Square rather than the shopping, the National Holocaust Museum on the Plantage Middenlaan is the place that tells it properly, about twenty minutes east.
Are the Three Crazy Days still on?
No. Drie Dwaze Dagen, the three-day discount event that de Bijenkorf launched in 1984 during the economic crisis, was discontinued in 2016. The company’s stated reason was that a mass discount event no longer fitted the premium positioning of the refurbished stores. It has not been replaced by an equivalent. The previous version of this page still advertised it as an annual autumn fixture, a decade after it stopped.
What does run is a rolling programme of pop-ups, brand events and in-store activations, listed by date on de Bijenkorf’s own events page rather than on any fixed annual calendar. The Amsterdam branch also houses a small de Bijenkorf Museum about the company’s own history, introduced across the stores in September 2025.
Which luxury brands are actually in the Amsterdam store?
Enough of them that the ground floor reads like a high street of its own, but this page now names only the ones de Bijenkorf itself has confirmed for the Amsterdam branch: a Cartier boutique, which reopened in October 2025; Tiffany & Co., which takes private VIP appointments here; a Longchamp boutique where members can personalise a Pliage bag, a service de Bijenkorf says exists nowhere else; and La Beauté Louis Vuitton, Louis Vuitton’s first beauty line, sold in the Netherlands exclusively at de Bijenkorf Amsterdam since August 2025. Gucci also trades in the building.
Other services the store publishes for Amsterdam include garment alterations through a tailor service, repairs on clothing and watches, Dyson servicing, cosmetics consultations, and sneaker cleaning through the Sneakerbar for members. A longer brand list circulates on travel sites, including this page’s old version, naming houses that de Bijenkorf does not currently list for Amsterdam. Those have been dropped rather than repeated.
Who owns de Bijenkorf now?
de Bijenkorf is part of Selfridges Group, alongside Selfridges in England and Brown Thomas and Arnotts in Ireland. Selfridges Group was bought in a joint deal by Thailand’s Central Group and the Austrian property investor Signa Holding. After Signa ran into financial trouble and began restructuring, Central Group bought out Signa’s shares and took the majority stake, so the Dutch chain now sits under Thai control. It is a useful thing to know when a “Dutch icon” framing turns up in the marketing.
When is it least unpleasant to go?
Google’s popular-times data for this store peaks on Saturday at around 15:00, which it rates as busy as the store gets all week. Monday is the quietest day and also the shortest, opening at 11:00. If you want the tax-refund kiosks without a queue, a weekday morning shortly after 10:00 is the obvious window, and it has the side benefit that Dam Square itself is still walkable at that hour. Late evening is the other soft spot: the store trades until 21:00 six days a week, and most of the square’s foot traffic has thinned by 20:00.
Can you park, and is the store accessible?
Driving to the door is not the plan. Dam Square is pedestrianised and de Bijenkorf does not publish a car park of its own on its Amsterdam store page; what the store’s Google listing does record is a wheelchair-accessible car park and a wheelchair-accessible entrance, plus public toilets inside. Bikes are the better answer: the municipal bicycle garage under Beursplein, with its entrance on the Damrak, is a few minutes north of the store and is the nearest large secure bicycle parking in this part of the centre.
What else is within five minutes of the door?
Dam Square is the densest cluster of landmarks in the city, and the store is on the corner of it, so a shopping stop folds easily into a walk.
| Place | Direction from Dam 1 | Why bother |
|---|---|---|
| Royal Palace | Directly across the square, west | The 17th-century town hall that became a palace |
| Magna Plaza | Two minutes behind the palace | The old central post office, now a shopping arcade |
| Charging Bull | Three minutes north on the Damrak | Placed overnight without permission in 2012 and never removed |
| Beursplein | Four minutes north | Two rival exchange buildings on one small square |
| Rembrandt Monument | About 10 minutes south-east to the Rembrandtplein | The oldest surviving statue of the painter in the city |
| The Dancing Houses | Three minutes north, on the Damrak waterfront | The leaning canal-front row everyone photographs |
For a longer day out from the same starting point, the canal ring starts one street west, the Cuypers Library inside the Rijksmuseum is a short tram ride south, and if you would rather spend the afternoon eating than shopping, the Ten Kate market and Rudi’s stroopwafels are both better value than anything on the Damrak. Our city cards and passes guide covers whether any of the discount cards are worth it for a shopping-led trip. They generally are not.
What we could not verify
Several claims that appeared on this page before today could not be confirmed against de Bijenkorf’s own material or any reliable source, so they have been removed rather than softened. They are listed here because they circulate widely and you will meet them elsewhere:
- An annual “Turn on the Lights” spectacular on Dam Square each November.
- An in-store art gallery with rotating exhibitions, and fashion shows.
- A hair salon.
- A named floor-by-floor department list.
- Brands beyond those the store itself currently lists for Amsterdam.
de Bijenkorf does run a Christmas programme and a Sinterklaas programme in the Amsterdam store, and it does stage events and pop-ups continuously. What could not be established is the specific November light-switching event under that name, so the page describes the programme rather than inventing a date for it.
Quick answers about de Bijenkorf Amsterdam
What are the opening hours?
Monday 11:00 to 21:00, Tuesday to Saturday 10:00 to 21:00, Sunday 10:00 to 20:00. The fifth-floor restaurant runs on separate hours.
Is de Bijenkorf open on Sunday?
Yes, from 10:00 to 20:00. It is the only day of the week the store closes before 21:00.
What is the address?
Dam 1, 1012 JS Amsterdam, on the corner of Dam Square and the Damrak. The store phone number is +31 20 808 9333.
Which tram goes to de Bijenkorf?
Trams 4, 14 and 24 stop at Dam on the Rokin side, closest to the door. Trams 2, 12, 13 and 17 use the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal side. Lines 9, 16 and 25 no longer exist.
Can I claim VAT back at de Bijenkorf?
Yes, if you live outside the EU and spend at least €50 in one day. The Amsterdam store pays the refund immediately at self-service kiosks in the fourth-floor Tax Refund Lounge, but you still need a customs stamp when you leave the EU.
Is there a restaurant inside?
The Kitchen, on the fifth floor. Self-service, no reservations, views over the rooftops around Dam Square.
Is the building worth seeing on its own?
It is a rijksmonument from 1911 to 1914 by J.A. van Straaten jr., with a 1937 to 1938 extension. The often-quoted Marcel Breuer design is the Rotterdam branch, built 1953 to 1957.
Do the Three Crazy Days still happen?
No. Drie Dwaze Dagen ran from 1984 and ended in 2016. Nothing equivalent replaced it.
Is it worth going in if I am not buying anything?
For most visitors, briefly. Entry is free, the building is listed, the small company museum is inside, and the fifth-floor restaurant is a rare central place you can sit down without a booking. As a shopping destination it is priced for people who already knew they wanted a Cartier boutique on Dam Square.
Sources and what we checked
Last updated 14 August 2026. Opening hours, the tax-refund conditions and process, the branch-by-branch refund differences, the Home Delivery service, the fourth-floor lounge, the fifth-floor restaurant, the current services and the confirmed Amsterdam brands were all taken from de Bijenkorf’s own Amsterdam store page and its tax-free shopping page on the same day. The founding date, founder, Nieuwendijk address and the 1911 to 1914 construction, architects and 1937 to 1938 extension come from the Dutch national monuments register entry 518426, the Arcam architecture guide and published company histories. The occupation history is from the company’s own cultural-heritage archive and Joods Amsterdam. The end of Drie Dwaze Dagen in 2016 is from contemporary Dutch press reporting. Tram lines and 2026 GVB fares were checked against the Dam stop and GVB’s 2026 tariffs. Popular-times and the 4.3 rating are Google’s data for this listing.
Hours, prices and services change. Where this page disagrees with the store’s own site on the day you visit, the store’s site is right, and we would rather hear about it than have you turn up to a closed door.
