Amsterdam

Lights Tours

Experience Amsterdam from a different perspective with a boat cruise along the city's canals at night. Discover picturesque canal houses, colorful neighborhoods, and historic monuments as you cruise through the city center. Sit back and relax as you tour through the historic canal district and admire the beauty of Amsterdam. Learn about the city with an onboard audio commentary available in 19 different languages. Enjoy advantageous views from inside the boat with sliding windows and panoramic rooftops so you don’t miss a single thing. Have your camera ready as you travel through the famous canals, which are part of UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list. Watch as the streets are lit up and lively, the buildings illuminated by warm, bright lights and the little terraces packed with people unwinding after a day’s work. The cruise lasts around 1 hour and takes you past some of the city’s most fascinating sites.

From November 29th 2018 till January 22nd 2019, Amsterdam will turn into a breathtaking work of art. For the seventh time in a row, the Amsterdam Light Festival will take place. Artists, architects, and designers from all over the world will produce light artworks and installations, which showcase Amsterdam’s heritage in a special way. A-Bike will guide you along the breathtaking artworks of the Amsterdam Light Festival. The bike tour will last an hour and 30 minutes and departs every day of the week at 5pm and 7pm. This year there will be more focus then ever on the land route. For the first time in history the land exposition will be exposed during the whole festival. During the bike tour, which will depart at A-Bike Damsquare, we will guide you along the highlights of both expositions. The best of both worlds. Our multilingual guides tell you all about the amazing artworks and the inspiring artists. The light artworks which are brought to life during the Amsterdam Light Festival have been designed and created especially for the festival. The organisation selected 30 concepts from over 900 submissions by artists from 45 countries. On the route across the 17th century canals and past the Amstel river, you will also get to see the most beautiful, historical parts of the Amsterdam canal belt. For the seventh edition of the Amsterdam Light Festival, artists from home and abroad take you on a journey along 30 light artworks specially created for Amsterdam. The 53-day exhibition revolves around the theme ‘The Medium is the Message’, the famous statement by the Canadian scientist Marshall McLuhan. The idea behind McLuhan’s statement was simple: the medium with which we send a message is more important than the message itself. What role does light play as a medium or as a message? More than 600 artists from around the world have looked into this issue and submitted their concept. Ultimately, 30 artworks were selected that will light up the historic city centre of Amsterdam during the festival.