The best independent bookshops in Amsterdam
Imagine this: it's one of the rare sunny days in Amsterdam, you're strolling along the canals of the Dutch capital, dodging bikes and tourists, sipping a coffee and doing one of the best activities known to humankind. A bookshop crawl. Dreamy, right?
If a trip to Amsterdam is on your horizon, and if, like me, you love adding independent bookshops to your travel itinerary, you've come to the right place. Because finding the best independent bookshops in Amsterdam is something I took very seriously.
After living in the city for more than five years, I feel more than qualified to put this list together. And now that I've moved away, writing this is bringing on a lil nostalgia. Not for the rain. Never for the rain. For everything else though.
So let's take an imaginary bookshop crawl together through the beautiful streets and canals of Amsterdam.
The book exchange
Let me start with a bang. My absolute favourite. The top of the list. The best solo date spot in the entire city.
The Book Exchange, on Kloveniersburgwal, was the first bookshop I ever walked into in Amsterdam, back when I was just visiting a friend and long before I moved there. It was love at first sight.
The shop sprawls across three or four floors, impossibly narrow in true Amsterdam fashion, and absolutely crammed with books from floor to ceiling. It's beautifully organised into sections — fiction, non-fiction, thriller, fantasy, self-help and more — all arranged in alphabetical order, which makes it surprisingly easy to find exactly what you're looking for, or to get wonderfully lost in the process.
It's gained in popularity over the years, but the prices have stayed accessible. They've gone up a little, but nothing that'll put you off. And as a secondhand bookshop, it also buys the books you no longer need, for cash or store credit. Which, if you're trying to read more sustainably, is about as good as it gets.
Oudemanhuispoort Book Market
Right around the corner from The Book Exchange, tucked into a covered passage cutting through one of Amsterdam's oldest university buildings, is another one worth adding to your list.
The setting is just lovely: a centuries-old arcade lined with second-hand books on both sides, natural light coming in from either end. The passage itself dates back to the 15th century, and the book market has been a fixture here for decades. It has that feeling of always having been there.
The selection is more curated than The Book Exchange, fewer titles, but a good range of genres and still plenty in English. A perfect little stop on the way through.
The Amercian Book Center
Spui is another great spot for book lovers and that's where you'll find the next two bookshops on this list. Starting with ABC, or The American Book Center, a family-owned bookshop that has been a fixture in Amsterdam since 1972.
The browsing experience here is something else. The shop is huge, and what makes it extra fun to navigate is the spiral walkway that winds its way all the way up through the floors. If I remember correctly, this is also where I picked up my own beautiful copy of Mrs Dalloway, back in the day.
Now, are you ready for the best part? ABC has its own little café, hidden behind the shelves with the perfect view over Spui square. So once you're done browsing, you can sit down, sip a coffee and people-watch to your heart's content. It genuinely doesn't get much better than this.
Athenaeum Boekhandel and Scheltema
Once you're done with your drink, leave ABC and cross the street. That's where you'll find Athenaeum Boekhandel, one of Amsterdam's oldest and most beloved independent bookshops, founded in 1966. The selection leans intellectual and academic, but there's a well-curated English section too, with both fiction and non-fiction. And right next door is the Athenaeum Nieuwscentrum, their newsstand, which stocks an extraordinary range of international magazines in English.
If you want to keep going, Athenaeum's sister store Scheltema is a short walk away on Rokin. An Amsterdam institution since 1853, it packs over 125,000 titles across five floors, with an English section and a café. The kind of place where an afternoon disappears without warning.
Photo by Oleksandr Zhabin on Unsplash
The English Bookshop
Since you are already in Rokin, don’t miss the english book shop tucked at the edge of kalverstraat and close by to the flower mmarket. It’s small but has a good across different genres. It's where I had my first ever blind date with a book. For the uninitiated: you pick a wrapped book with nothing but a few clues written on the outside, and you don't know what's inside until you get home. Mine turned out to be A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman. I cried every single tear I had.
Le Temps Retrouvé
For the French speakers out there, or anyone who reads in French, Le Temps Retrouvé is your place. Amsterdam's only 100% French-language bookshop, tucked on the Keizersgracht, it carries all kinds of books in French for both adults and children, and has a genuinely curated, personal feel that's hard to find in larger shops.
Beyond the books, it also organises cultural events and literary debates in partnership with L'Échappée Belle, a foundation dedicated to promoting French culture in the Netherlands. So if you happen to be in Amsterdam when something is on, check their programme before you go, it's worth the evening.
The Amsterdam bookshop crawl never really ends
This is just the tip of the iceberg, but these are genuinely my favourites. So if Amsterdam is in your future, I hope this list gives you a starting point. Go in without a strict agenda, leave room for detours, and don't be surprised if you come home with more books than you planned. Have you been to any of these? Or is there one I missed that absolutely deserves a place on this list? I’m all ears.
