The most romantic places in Amsterdam

Stand on the Herengracht bridge where it crosses the Reguliersgracht and look south: seven bridge arches line up one behind the other, and after dark each is outlined in small lights that close into circles in the water. It is the most romantic five minutes in Amsterdam, free and unbooked, and most first-time visitors never find it. The circles need a still night. Stand on the bridge, not the bike-busy kerb, and come at ten rather than eight, once the Rembrandtplein dinner crowd has thinned.

Walk up the embankment from the Blauwbrug rather than arriving head-on; the approach along the water is half the pleasure. Bring a layer, because the wind comes straight up the river. In winter it is lit by five in the afternoon, one of the few ways a dark December beats a bright June.

The Begijnhof is a medieval courtyard of houses around a green, including one of the oldest surviving wooden houses in Amsterdam, and it costs nothing to walk in; fifteen minutes does it properly. It is privately owned and people live here, so leave bikes, dogs and wheeled luggage outside and keep your voices low. Come by day: the gate closes in the evening and on King's Day.

When it is cold or wet, the Hortus Botanicus in the Plantage, one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world, keeps its romance indoors: a butterfly house and a three-climate palm greenhouse, warm and humid. Stepping into tropical air off a wet February street is a disproportionate pleasure. It is ticketed, unlike most of this section, and an hour is right.

Start at Café 't Smalle in the Jordaan, a tiny 18th-century room with a canal-side terrace on the steps down to the water. On warm evenings the outside tables are gone by six, so come mid-afternoon or late, and take the inside table gladly when the light goes.

The terrace looks straight down the water to the Montelbaanstoren, so you sit on the canal rather than beside a street. It is two minutes from the Rembrandt House, and small and steep inside.

Museum Van Loon on the Keizersgracht answers it: a preserved patrician canal house with family portraits, period rooms and the staircase, and at the back a formal garden closed off by a coach house that nobody expects behind a canal facade. Give it a small, unhurried hour, and save most of it for sitting in the garden.

The same idea a few canals over, and prettier at the back: a Herengracht house kept as its last owners left it, with a restored French-style garden of box hedging and gravel that is invisible from the street. It opens daily, though holiday hours vary.

From the top you get the old centre, the harbour, the church towers and the water at once: a hillside in a city without one. Go in daylight, since the roof closes at half past five and is usually shut on Mondays. It is fully exposed, wonderful in June and brisk in February.

Two minutes from NEMO, the public library on the Oosterdokskade has a top-floor café with a terrace over the same water and rooftops, free to walk into; nobody asks for a library card. It is the warm version of NEMO when the wind is up. From roughly November to March the terrace is closed, so make it a view through glass with a coffee.