Hash Marihuana & Hemp Museum

Amsterdam has plenty of attractions that trade on the city's cannabis reputation without teaching you much. The Hash Marihuana & Hemp Museum is different: it has been building a real collection since 1987, and the museum says that collection now contains more than 9,000 objects connected with cannabis history and culture.

That immediately corrects one bit of drift in our old guide, which gave the opening year as 1985. The museum began as the Cannabis Info Museum in 1987, was briefly closed by authorities almost immediately, reopened, and later took its current name.

Current opening hours and tickets

The Amsterdam museum currently opens Monday to Thursday 12:00–20:00 and Friday to Sunday 10:00–22:00. The main address is Oudezijds Achterburgwal 148, about five minutes' walk from Dam Square.

The museum's visitor page currently lists standard admission at €10 including the audio tour, while its live ticket engine has recently displayed €9.50. I would treat the checkout price as final rather than planning a day around a 50-cent difference. Children up to and including age 12 enter free and must be accompanied by an adult.

Both Amsterdam exhibition spaces are listed as wheelchair accessible. Service dogs are permitted; other animals are not. Personal photography without flash is allowed.

It is actually two Amsterdam exhibition spaces

The museum's Amsterdam presentation is split across two complementary sites on the same canal. The original museum focuses heavily on the plant, medicine, prohibition, culture and the cannabis collection. The nearby Hemp Gallery, added in 2009, expands the industrial story: rope, paper, sails, clothing, food, design and other uses of hemp.

That two-space format is easy to miss if you arrive expecting one small room of counterculture memorabilia. The official museum suggests about one hour for a tour through both sites, and the included audio guide is currently offered in eight languages.

What you actually see

The collection ranges from historical medical material and smoking-related artefacts to propaganda, art, industrial hemp objects and documentation of changing cannabis policy. A living cannabis garden is part of the Amsterdam display, while the Hemp Gallery makes the less sensational but arguably more interesting case that hemp has had a long practical life as an agricultural and industrial material.

I would give the industrial and historical sections more time than the obvious Amsterdam-cannabis material. The museum is most useful when it connects the plant to shipping, textiles, medicine, counterculture and law rather than treating the Dutch coffeeshop scene as the whole story.

What this museum is not

This is not a coffeeshop, it does not exist to provide a consumption experience, and a museum ticket tells you nothing about whether a particular cannabis product or activity is lawful. If practical etiquette and current local rules are what you need, use our separate Amsterdam coffeeshop etiquette guide.

That distinction also makes the museum easier to recommend to travellers who are interested in Dutch social history but have no interest in consuming cannabis themselves.

Who should prioritise it?

Prioritise it if you are interested in social history, plant science, industrial hemp, medicine, counterculture or the peculiar evolution of Dutch cannabis policy. Keep it optional if you have only one museum slot in Amsterdam and still have not seen one of the city's major art or history institutions.

For families, the museum explicitly welcomes children and offers free admission for under-13s, but parents should still decide whether the drug-policy and cannabis subject matter suits their own kids. The museum's framing is educational; that does not mean every family will want it on the itinerary.

How to fit it into De Wallen

This works best as a one-hour stop inside a broader old-centre walk. Pair it with Oude Kerk, Nieuwmarkt or the medieval street pattern rather than making a special cross-city journey for the museum alone. Our De Wallen guide covers the neighbourhood's etiquette, history and current visitor rules without reducing the district to nightlife clichés.

I would avoid stacking another timed attraction immediately after it. Give yourself roughly 75 minutes door-to-door so you can see both museum spaces without rushing and still walk on to the next stop.

Sources checked 7 September 2026: official visitor information, official Amsterdam museum overview and the museum's current ticket engine. Hours and ticket prices can change, so recheck the official site before visiting.