Alkmaar, Netherlands: Self-Guided Walking Tour

The best things to do in Alkmaar include exploring its historic churches, learning about the city’s cheese-trading past, visiting museums and discovering landmarks connected with war, water management and football. The compact city centre is easy to explore on foot, while nearby sites add another layer to the story of North Holland. Neywo offers a free audio guide for Alkmaar with 48 narrated places.

What to see in Alkmaar

Grote or Sint-Laurenskerk

The Grote or Sint-Laurenskerk, also called the Great Church of Saint Lawrence, has dominated Alkmaar’s skyline for more than five centuries. This late-Gothic brick cross-basilica was built between 1470 and 1518 and is distinguished by its natural-stone exterior, seven-sided choir closure and four corner stair towers.

Inside is one of the church’s most remarkable features: the oldest still-playable church organ in the Netherlands. Its pipes have sounded since the 16th century. The building became Protestant after the Reformation reached Alkmaar in 1573 and has had no religious function since 1996.

The Waag and the Cheese Merchants

Alkmaar’s historic weigh house, the Waag, has stood on the square since 1582. It began as a chapel before becoming the place where goods were weighed, taxes were collected and cheese was traded. The city’s famous cheese market has taken place here every summer Friday for generations.

Look up at the tower for its mechanical knights on horseback, which circle every hour with an automatic trumpet player. The tower also contains a carillon, with live performances by a city carillonneur each week and an automatic drum marking the quarters.

The Dutch Cheese Museum has been inside the Waag since 1983. Its interactive displays follow cheese from cow to finished product, covering dairy production on farms and in factories as well as the trade that shaped Alkmaar.

Kapelkerk

The Kapelkerk is a medieval church beside the Laat canal in Alkmaar’s historic centre. Its name recalls the Catholic Saint John’s Chapel that once stood on the site. The building now serves the Dutch Reformed Churches congregation, continuing the site’s long religious history.

Accijnstoren

The Accijnstoren has formed part of Alkmaar’s cityscape since 1622. Standing for more than four centuries, this historic tower is a reminder of the city’s older civic and commercial landscape.

Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar

On Canadaplein, the city’s culture square, the Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar stands opposite the Grote or Sint-Laurenskerk. The municipal museum preserves and presents the art, history and cultural heritage of Alkmaar and the surrounding region.

Founded in 1875, it is one of the oldest museums in the Netherlands. The institution occupied other buildings before moving to its current location, which underwent a complete modernization between 2012 and 2014.

The Beatles Museum

The Beatles Museum brings a little Liverpool to Alkmaar. Founded in 1981 in Krommenie, it moved to Alkmaar in 1995 and has been located on Pettemerstraat, close to the central station, since 2016.

The collection includes memorabilia, records and stories tracing the band’s career from the Cavern Club to their final rooftop concert. It is a focused museum for anyone interested in the history of the Fab Four.

Victoriemonument

In Victoriepark, the Victoriemonument commemorates the Alkmaar Relief of 1573. During the Eighty Years’ War, Spanish forces besieged the city, but Alkmaar held out and the siege was broken. The event became an important turning point in the Dutch struggle for independence.

The statue represents Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory, and is also associated with the name Alcmaria victrix, or Victoria of Alkmaar.

Een treurende stedenmaagd

Een treurende stedenmaagd, meaning “A Mourning City Maiden”, is a war memorial in Alkmaar. The monument honours those lost in war and offers a quieter place for reflection among the city’s historic landmarks.

Kasteel Middelburg

Kasteel Middelburg is an archaeological site where the foundations and moat of a medieval fortress remain. The protected site is a national monument.

The castle was built in the late 13th century as part of a defensive network ordered by Count Floris the Fifth of Holland. It guarded a strategic route along the Munnikenweg, a dike constructed as a military road. Its name likely refers to its position between two other fortified houses, Nieuwburg near the Vroner Geest and Torenburg in Alkmaar.

Together with fortifications at Wijdenes, Radboud in Medemblik and Nuwendoorn near the Rekere, Middelburg formed part of a chain of strongholds across West Friesland.

Ondermolen D

Ondermolen D is one of the last surviving windmills of the Schermer polder and the only one of the three at the site that operates as a museum. Visitors can enter the mill, climb its stairs and see the preserved miller’s residence.

Built around 1635, it is an octagonal, thatched ground-sailer with a cap turned from inside on wooden rollers. Originally part of a chain of six scoop-wheel mills, it helped lift water from the Schermer inner basin. The system was converted to Archimedes screws in 1850, and Ondermolen D continued working until 1926. The mill was restored in 1969–1970 and again in 2004.

De Rijp’s museums and churches

Several Neywo audio-guide places extend beyond Alkmaar into the village of De Rijp and the surrounding polder landscape. Museum In ’t Houten Huis occupies a former orphanage beside the Tuingracht canal. Its original wooden framework gives the museum its name, “in the wooden house”, while its exhibitions explore the history of De Rijp and the reclaimed landscape of Schermereiland.

Museum Jan Boon is housed in Het Walhuis on Rechtestraat. Nearby, the Sint-Bonifatiuskerk has stood since the 1860s. Built between 1860 and 1863 in neo-Gothic style, it replaced an earlier barn church and retains a unified interior with works from the Cuypers-Stoltzenberg workshop. Its tower contains a bell cast in 1667 by Pieter Hemony.

In Noordeinde, the Doopsgezinde vermaning is a historic church at number 18, in the Schermer polder area near Graft.

AFAS Stadion

AFAS Stadion is the modern home of AZ Alkmaar. It replaced the Alkmaarderhout ground in 2006 and holds just under 20,000 fans. The stadium was designed to be expandable, allowing its capacity to grow.

Its current name comes from the Dutch software company that became the club’s main sponsor in 2010. During European matches, UEFA sponsorship rules mean the stadium is known as AZ Stadion instead.

Sint-Laurentiuskerk

The Sint-Laurentiuskerk is a Roman Catholic church in the heart of Alkmaar. It remains a place of worship for the city’s Catholic community and forms part of the collection of religious landmarks covered by the city’s audio guide.

Explore Alkmaar with a self-guided audio tour

An Alkmaar self-guided walking tour lets you discover the city at your own pace, without joining a group or following a fixed schedule. Neywo has three walking tours and one bike route in Alkmaar:

• Cheese, Cannonballs and Canals: Alkmaar’s Historic Heart — 2.27 km, 85 minutes and 10 narrated stops.
• Faith, Art and the Fab Four: Around Canadaplein — 2.68 km, 93 minutes and 9 narrated stops.
• Oudorp: the vanished castles of the counts of Holland — 2.1 km, 50 minutes and 4 narrated stops.
• Polder Ride: Stompetoren’s Ark to Alkmaar — a 5.2 km bike route lasting 26 minutes, with 2 narrated stops.

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. Download Neywo for a free audio guide and explore Alkmaar while walking or cycling.

For more ideas in the province, continue through North Holland, or combine Alkmaar with Amsterdam, Haarlem, Volendam or Zaandam.