Things to Do in Arnhem, Netherlands: Walking Guide

The best things to do in Arnhem include exploring its museums, walking through Sonsbeek Park, learning about the Battle of Arnhem and discovering the city’s connection with Dutch water, art and everyday life. Set in Gelderland in the Netherlands, Arnhem combines cultural sights with wooded hills, rivers and open-air attractions. Neywo has a free audio guide for Arnhem with 88 narrated places.

What to see in Arnhem

Museum Arnhem and modern art

Museum Arnhem is housed in the former Buitensocieteit, an elegant building on a moraine hill overlooking the Rhine. Designed by Cornelis Outshoorn as a gentlemen’s society, it opened in that role before becoming home to the museum in 1920.

The museum itself was founded in 1856 by local collectors and civic leaders. Its collection focuses on modern and contemporary art, applied art and design, with particular attention to twentieth-century works. Painting, sculpture and thematic installations are displayed in galleries shaped by natural light and clear sightlines. After a renovation lasting more than four years, the museum reopened on 13 May 2022.

Sonsbeek Park and the Belvédère

Sonsbeek Park is one of Arnhem’s defining green spaces. Its historic Belvédère stands on the Ruyterenberg, a seventy-metre hill and the highest point in the park. Built between 1824 and 1826, the observation tower originally stood twenty-four metres high.

The tower was raised by five and a half metres in 1954, after the surrounding trees had grown high enough to obstruct the view. From the top, the landscape extends towards Nijmegen, Tiel and Emmerik in Germany on a clear day. The Belvédère reaches about one hundred metres above sea level, roughly the height of the spire of Sint-Eusebiuskerk.

The Dutch Water Museum

The Nederlands Watermuseum occupies the historic Bagijnemolen, a water mill dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It stands beside the Sint-Jansbeek stream, at the place where Arnhem began.

Its permanent exhibition, Water World, includes more than fifty interactive presentations. Visitors can explore how sluices and pumping stations protect the Netherlands from flooding, examine the role of water in the human body and follow water through the sewer system. A water laboratory, water cinema and hands-on displays make the subject practical as well as informative.

The Netherlands Open Air Museum

The Netherlands Open Air Museum brings everyday Dutch history to life across forty-four hectares of parkland. Original farms, houses, mills, workshops and prayer houses were moved here from different parts of the Netherlands.

Founded on 24 April 1912 and opened to the public in July 1918, the museum preserves ways of living from the last three and a half centuries. Its buildings are arranged in areas including Erven, Dorp, Platteland, Tuinen, Lint and Landgoed. Among the exhibits is a traditional farmhouse from Hoogmade in South Holland, a krukhuisboerderij with a curved roof that drops low over the living quarters.

The museum’s atmosphere becomes especially lively at weekends, when visitors may encounter barrel organs, threshing, horses ploughing fields and the communal work of a rye harvest.

Airborne at the Bridge

Airborne at the Bridge is a compact information centre on the Rijnkade, overlooking the John Frost Bridge. Opened in 2017 as part of the Airborne Museum, it offers a focused introduction to the Battle of Arnhem in September 1944. Entry is free.

The exhibition presents the battle through the experiences of British Lieutenant John Grayburn, German Hauptsturmführer Viktor Eberhard Gräbner and Dutch Captain Jacob Groenewoud. A 3D presentation follows the paratrooper landings, the advance towards the bridge, the British defeat and the refugees who were forced to leave.

The displays also focus on Lieutenant Colonel John Frost and the soldiers who held the northern end of the bridge for several days despite being heavily outnumbered. The view towards the crossing connects the exhibition directly with the landscape of the battle.

Arnhem War Museum 40-45

Arnhem War Museum 40-45 is a privately run museum in a former school building in Schaarsbergen. Its small scale creates an intimate setting for a collection covering both military and civilian experiences of the Second World War around Arnhem.

Period interiors evoke life in Dutch homes during the occupation. Uniforms, weapons, vehicles and communication equipment illustrate the operations of the forces involved, while objects connected with the Battle of Arnhem place the local story within the wider conflict.

Museum Bronbeek

Museum Bronbeek combines military history with the colonial history of the former Dutch East Indies. It developed from a nineteenth-century retirement home for veterans who had served in the colonies, established on the orders of King William the Third.

The museum’s collection includes cannons, Indonesian weapons, uniforms, paintings, personal possessions and archival documents. Testimonies explore colonial campaigns, the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army and the path towards Indonesian independence. The former veterans’ home and its grounds remain part of the museum’s character.

The Dutch Wine Museum

The Dutch Wine Museum is located in the vaulted cellars of the former Robbers & Van den Hoogen wine merchant house. Arnhem was once a centre of the Netherlands’ wine trade, where barrels arrived, matured and were distributed around the country.

Displays cover the journey from vineyard to bottle, including harvesting, crushing, fermentation and bottling. Traditional tools, barrels, tasting equipment, historic photographs, corkscrews, bottles and signed sherry barrels reveal the practical and social history of wine in the Netherlands.

The IJssel

East of Arnhem, at Westervoort, the IJssel branches from the Rhine and begins its northward course. Known to the Romans as Isala, the river runs for about 125 kilometres through Gelderland and Overijssel, the province whose name refers to the river.

The IJssel was originally a smaller stream flowing parallel to the Rhine. A historical breakthrough connected it with the Rhine’s lower course, creating the waterway that carries a significant share of Rhine water northwards. The river is also called the Gelderse IJssel, distinguishing it from the Hollandse IJssel farther west.

Burgers’ Desert and Burgers’ Mangrove

Burgers’ Desert is a 7,500-square-metre indoor habitat at Burgers’ Zoo recreating the deserts of Arizona and northern Mexico. Fixed paths pass through rock formations, desert plants and the habitats of animals adapted to a harsh environment. The Desert opened in 1994.

Burgers’ Mangrove offers a very different ecosystem. The indoor hall recreates a tropical tidal forest, with seawater flooding part of the forest floor twice a day before receding to expose a muddy surface beneath the mangrove trees.

Monnikhuizen and Klarenbeek Park

Klarenbeek Park preserves the peaceful setting of Monnikhuizen, once Arnhem’s oldest monastery. Founded in 1342, the Carthusian monastery was known by the Latin names Domus Monachorum and Domus Gelria. The monks lived there in strict enclosure for almost three centuries.

The monastery buildings disappeared long ago, but the park still carries the name and retains the quiet wooded landscape associated with the former cloister.

Explore Arnhem with Neywo

Neywo lets you turn an Arnhem self-guided walking tour into a flexible way to discover the city. The app tells the story of each place as you reach it, at your own pace, with no group and no schedule. Narration is available in 11 languages.

Arnhem includes five walking tours:

• A Bridge Too Far: The Battle of Arnhem on Foot — 1.4 km, 69 minutes and 10 narrated stops.
• Squares, Domes and Yellow Riders — 1.59 km, 81 minutes and 12 stops.
• Windmills, Trams and a Paper Mill: The Open Air Museum — 2.09 km, 79 minutes and 11 stops.
• Sonsbeek: Art, Water and a Hilltop Tower — 3.7 km, 101 minutes and 8 stops.
• Theatres, Neo-Gothic Spires and a Wine Cellar — 2.6 km, 84 minutes and 10 stops.

There is also one bus route, Bus 33: Over the Bridge Too Far, covering 2.3 km in 10 minutes with 6 stops, and one bike route, From the Bridge to the Belvedere, covering 2.2 km in 11 minutes with 5 stops.

Download Neywo to explore Arnhem as you move through it, from the John Frost Bridge and Airborneplein to Sonsbeek Park, the Belvédère and the Netherlands Open Air Museum. For more ideas in the area, see Gelderland, or continue to Nijmegen and Zevenaar.