# Van Gogh Museum audio guide, five stops, free.

Five recordings you can start right now, with no app and no queue at the audio desk. Then point Chiaro at anything else on the walls, from the two hundred Van Goghs to the Monets and Gauguins around them, and hear that one.

Made by Chiaro. Not affiliated with Van Gogh Museum. Page: https://chiaro.ai/museums/van-gogh-museum/

Five paintings on two floors of the Rietveld building, in about ten and a half minutes of audio. It opens on Floor 1 with Sunflowers, in the Arles section the museum calls Artistic Flourishing, and The Bedroom in the same section. Then it doubles back down the same floor to The Potato Eaters in the Nuenen rooms, and climbs to Floor 3 for Almond Blossom, which returns there after the Vincent's Path to Fame exhibition closes on 6 September 2026, in the Saint-Rémy rooms and Wheatfield with Crows in the Auvers rooms at the end. Sunflowers comes first on purpose: it is the one work here everybody is walking towards. Give the whole loop about an hour on foot, inside the two to three hours the museum says an average visit takes.

The catalogue lines come from the Van Gogh Museum's own online collection, and the floors and gallery names from the wall texts the museum publishes as a PDF for each floor. Both were checked on 6 September 2026. This museum numbers floors rather than rooms, and it lends its own masterpieces to its own temporary exhibitions, so a painting can move to another wing without leaving the building. Trust the wall label over this page wherever the two disagree, and send us the correction.

## The stops

### 1. Sunflowers

Vincent van Gogh · Arles, January 1889 · Oil on canvas, 95 × 73 cm · Floor 1, Artistic Flourishing, the Arles rooms

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/museums/van-gogh-museum/en/sunflowers.mp3?v=1234276 (154 s)

Look for:
- The word Vincent, painted in blue across the belly of the pot. He signed only about fifteen per cent of his paintings, and this is one the museum's researchers name as a work he was proud of.
- The band along the very top. It is a strip of wood he fixed to the canvas while he was working and then painted yellow with everything else.
- How low the light is. After the research on this painting the museum cut its maximum light level by two thirds, from 150 lux to 50.

A pot of sunflowers on a table against a wall, and the pot, the table and the wall are all more or less the same yellow. That is the whole picture. Van Gogh built it out of three shades of yellow and, in his own words, nothing else, to see how far one colour could be pushed before it stopped saying anything.

He painted five large canvases of sunflowers in a vase, in Arles, in 1888 and 1889. This one is from January 1889, and it is a repetition: he copied it from the version he had made the previous summer, the one now in the National Gallery in London. When an international team went over the canvas in detail between 2016 and 2019, they found that the arrangement was planned in advance. He knew exactly what the finished painting would look like before he started it.

The reason for this set of pictures was Paul Gauguin. Van Gogh had rented the Yellow House in Arles and Gauguin had agreed to come and live in it with him. Van Gogh hung the first two sunflower canvases in Gauguin's bedroom as a welcome. Gauguin looked at them and said they were completely Vincent. Later he asked for one as a present, and Van Gogh did not want to part with it.

Now look at the pot. Across the belly of it, in blue, is a single word: Vincent. That signature is rarer than it looks. The museum finished the first full study of his signatures in August 2026 and found that he signed only 133 of his 840 known paintings, and nearly always with his first name alone, because outside the Netherlands almost nobody could manage his surname. He signed the ones he was proud of, and this is one of them.

Look at the top edge too. The band above the tallest flower heads is a strip of wood he fixed to the canvas while he was working, and painted yellow along with the rest, because the picture wanted to be taller than the canvas he had.

The yellows in front of you are not quite the yellows he mixed. The research team, led by the conservator Ella Hendriks, found that a red in the picture, geranium lake, has faded, and that a yellow, chrome yellow, has darkened. Some of the browner heads were brighter once. That is also why these galleries are so dim. The findings pushed the museum to cut its maximum light level by two thirds, from 150 lux to 50, and to fit new bulbs.

And the same research is why this canvas will never leave the building again. It had been lent out six times in the museum's whole history, the last time in 2014, when it went to London to hang beside its own older sibling. In January 2019 the museum announced that the paint layers are stable but very sensitive to vibration and to changes in humidity, and that Sunflowers would stay in Amsterdam from now on. Whatever you have seen these flowers on, a poster, a mug, a bag, this is the object, and it does not travel to you.

When Van Gogh died, friends brought sunflowers to his funeral. He had wanted to be known as the painter of sunflowers, and by then he was.

### 2. The Bedroom

Vincent van Gogh · Arles, October 1888 · Oil on canvas, 72.4 × 91.3 cm · Floor 1, Artistic Flourishing, the Arles rooms

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/museums/van-gogh-museum/en/the-bedroom.mp3?v=957587 (120 s)

Look for:
- The two small portraits high on the right-hand wall. They are his own paintings of friends made in Arles that year, Eugène Boch and Paul-Eugène Milliet.
- The back wall, which meets the side walls at no proper angle. The real room was a trapezoid and he painted it as it was.
- The blue of the walls and doors. It was purple when he painted it, and it has discoloured in the years since.

A bed, two chairs, a table with a jug and a basin, clothes on a peg, and a floor of red tiles. Van Gogh painted his own bedroom in the Yellow House in Arles in October 1888, and he told his brother exactly what he wanted from it: the colour had to do the work, and the work was to suggest rest, or sleep. Looking at the picture was supposed to rest your mind.

It does not quite rest the eye, for two reasons.

The first is that the colours have moved. The walls and the doors read as blue now. They were purple when he laid them down. The museum puts that down to discolouration over the years, and the balance he set up, purple walls against butter-yellow furniture, has gone with it. You are looking at a painting that has drifted away from its own instructions.

The second is the back wall. Follow the line where it meets the wall on the left, then the wall on the right. Nothing is square. Plenty of visitors decide that Van Gogh could not handle perspective. He could. The room really was that shape, a trapezoid with one blunt corner and one sharp one, and he painted the room he had.

What he did change was the light. He wrote to Theo that he had deliberately flattened the interior and taken out the shadows so the picture would look like a Japanese print. There is no modelling in the bed, and no cast shadow under the chairs.

The door on the right opened onto the stairs. The door on the left opened onto the guest room he was keeping ready for Gauguin. The window at the back looked out onto Place Lamartine and its gardens.

Look high on the right-hand wall, at the two small portraits. Those are his own paintings of two friends he made in Arles that year: the painter Eugène Boch, whom he called The Poet, and the soldier Paul-Eugène Milliet, whom he called The Lover. He hung his friends over his bed.

There are three versions of this room, and this is the first. It was damaged by a flood of the Rhône while Van Gogh was in the hospital at Arles, and Theo had it relined and sent back so his brother could copy it. That copy, made in September 1889, is in Chicago. A smaller third one, painted for his mother and his sister Wil, is in Paris. This is the original, and his own verdict on it, written after one of his breakdowns, was flat and certain: when he saw his canvases again after his illness, the best of them was the bedroom.

### 3. The Potato Eaters

Vincent van Gogh · Nuenen, April–May 1885 · Oil on canvas, 82 × 114 cm · Floor 1, Painter of Peasant Life, the Nuenen rooms

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/museums/van-gogh-museum/en/the-potato-eaters.mp3?v=942332 (118 s)

Look for:
- The back of the chair at the far left. He signed the painting there, and the signature has almost sunk into the dark paint.
- The hands. Every one of them is oversized and every one is doing something, because the hands are the argument of the picture.
- The single oil lamp. It is the only light in the room and it sets every colour on the canvas.

You have walked backwards in time to get here. Four years before the sunflowers, in a village in the south of the Netherlands called Nuenen, Van Gogh set out to prove he could paint people, and picked the hardest thing he could think of: five figures, one lamp, one room, at night.

Give your eyes a moment. The canvas is very dark, and the longer you stand in front of it the more comes up out of the gloom.

He was after a particular effect. He wrote that the peasants should look as though they had dug those potatoes with the same hands they were now putting in the dish, and had therefore honestly earned their food. So he gave them coarse faces and heavy, knotted hands, and painted the whole thing in earth colours, something, as he put it, like the colour of a really dusty potato, unpeeled of course.

Look at the hands. Every one is too big, and every one is busy: cutting, pouring, reaching, holding a cup. Then look at the lamp. It is the only light in the room and it decides every colour on the canvas.

This was meant to be his visiting card as an artist. He had been preparing for more than a year. He wrote that a peasant painting ought to smell of bacon, smoke and steaming potatoes, and that anyone who would rather look at prettier peasants was welcome to go elsewhere. Then he showed it and it went badly. His friend and fellow painter Anthon van Rappard condemned it almost at once, and Van Gogh wrote back that Van Rappard had no right to talk about his work that way. The colours were called too dark. The figures were called wrong. Two years later, living in Paris and painting in colours that would be unthinkable in this room, he still said this was the best thing he had done.

Now find the back of the chair at the far left. He signed it there, Vincent, and the signature has almost disappeared into the dark paint. He signed about fifteen per cent of his paintings, and when the museum's researchers explain which ones, this is one of the two they name: he signed what he was proud of.

One more thing about this quiet canvas. In 1991 thieves carried it out of this museum along with nineteen other paintings. They got clear of the building. Thirty-five minutes later all twenty were found in an abandoned car. It is still the largest art theft in the Netherlands since the Second World War, and two of the four men convicted were guards who worked here.

### 4. Almond Blossom

Vincent van Gogh · Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, February 1890 · Oil on canvas, 73.3 × 92.4 cm · Floor 3, Painting Against All Odds, the Saint-Rémy rooms; until 6 September 2026 it hangs in the Vincent's Path to Fame exhibition

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/museums/van-gogh-museum/en/almond-blossom.mp3?v=942958 (118 s)

Look for:
- The blue. He painted the sky in afterwards, precisely, around every twig, and close up it is not one blue but many.
- The buds. Some flowers are wide open and others still closed, done with unusual care.
- The four edges, where the branches simply run off the canvas. You never see the whole tree, and that cropping comes straight out of Japanese printmaking.

After three rooms of yellow and brown, this. A tree seen from directly underneath, close enough that you never see the whole tree, against a blue that has no business being that blue.

Van Gogh painted it in February 1890, in the asylum at Saint-Rémy, where he had been living for almost ten months. He painted it because of a letter. On the thirty-first of January his brother Theo and his sister-in-law Jo had a son, and they named the boy Vincent, after him. Theo wrote: as we told you, we'll name him after you, and I'm making the wish that he may be as determined and as courageous as you.

He started straight away. Almond trees flower early in the spring, ahead of everything else, so the branch is the standard image for the start of spring, and he was painting it for a beginning.

Look at the blue. He did not lay the branches over a flat ground. He painted the sky in afterwards, precisely, around every twig, and if you stand close you will find it is not one blue but many of them, shifting the way a real sky does. Look at the flowers as well. Some are wide open and some are still tight buds, painted with an attention he did not always bother with.

The angle is borrowed. Van Gogh collected Japanese prints by the hundred, and Japanese printmakers crop a piece of nature and let it run off the edge of the sheet instead of showing you the whole tree. That is what happens here, on all four sides.

The painting cost him. He finished it at the end of February and then had an attack that lasted two months, the longest crisis of his life. By the time he could work again the blossom was over. If I'd been able to continue working, he wrote, I would have done others of the trees in blossom. Now the trees in blossom are almost finished. I have no luck.

There is no signature on it. He signed only a small share of his paintings, and by this point had all but given it up.

The picture went to Theo and Jo, and it hung above the piano in their living room, and later in the Bussum bedroom Jo shared with her small son. Jo sold a great many of Vincent's paintings in her lifetime, deliberately, to make him known. This one was never for sale. The baby it was painted for grew up to be the man who founded this museum, which is the reason it is on this wall and not in somebody's house.

### 5. Wheatfield with Crows

Vincent van Gogh · Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890 · Oil on canvas, 50.5 × 103 cm · Floor 3, 1890 Impassioned Nature, the Auvers rooms

Audio: https://audio.chiaro.ai/museums/van-gogh-museum/en/wheatfield-with-crows.mp3?v=918926 (115 s)

Look for:
- The shape. A double square, twice as wide as it is high, a format he used only in the last few weeks of his life.
- The central path. It comes towards you, widens, and stops in the wheat; there is no horizon at the end of it.
- The red-brown of the paths against the green strips of grass beside them. He set those two colours together on purpose, the way he set blue sky against yellow wheat.

Stand back a step, because the first thing about this painting is its shape. It is twice as wide as it is high, a double square, and Van Gogh used that stretched format only in the last few weeks of his life, in June and July 1890, at Auvers-sur-Oise.

Now the thing everybody knows about it, which is not true. This is not his last painting. Ask around this room and half the visitors will tell you he finished it, walked into a field and shot himself. That version comes largely from a film, Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life, made in 1956, which stages it exactly that way. The museum calls the claim a persistent myth, because he made several works after this one. He completed this canvas around the tenth of July, and Auvers Town Hall is dated the fourteenth. The painting most likely to be his last, Tree Roots, is in this building too.

What he actually wrote is better than the legend. Around the tenth of July he told Theo and Jo that he had finished three large canvases at Auvers, two of them enormous stretches of wheat under troubled skies. He said he had gone out of his way to express sadness and extreme loneliness. Then, in the same breath, he said the pictures showed what he found healthy and fortifying about the countryside. Both at once, in one field.

Look at what he does with colour, because he is very deliberate about it. Blue sky against yellow-orange wheat. Then the paths, red-brown, laid straight against the green strips of grass beside them, so each colour makes the other louder. Nothing here is a mixed, muddy tone.

Now follow the central path. It comes towards you, widens, and simply stops in the wheat. No horizon at the end of it, no gate, no figure. The wheat takes up two thirds of the canvas, the crows are flying in no agreed direction, and the picture refuses to settle. That is a piece of construction, not a suicide note.

One last thing. In 1991 this canvas was one of twenty carried out of this museum by thieves, and one of the three that were severely torn on the way. Everything came back within thirty-five minutes, found in an abandoned car. You are looking at a painting that has already survived the worst night in the building's history.

## Before you go

Museumplein 6, 1071 DJ Amsterdam. The way in is the glass entrance building on Museum Square, not the older Rietveld building behind it, which faces Paulus Potterstraat.

The museum names two nearby stops. Museumplein takes trams 2, 5 and 24 and buses 357 and 397; Concertgebouw takes trams 5, 12 and 24 and buses 347 and 357. From Amsterdam Central Station, tram 2, 5 or 24 to Museumplein; from Zuid WTC, tram 5 to Concertgebouw; from Amstel, tram 12 to Concertgebouw.

- There is no ticket desk. Every visitor books a timed ticket online at tickets.vangoghmuseum.com first, and that includes free entry on a Museumkaart, ICOM card, Stadspas or Rembrandt card.
- Adults pay around twenty-five euros, students enrolled in the EU or EEA pay less with a card, and under-18s are free, but they all still need a booked start time. Check the current prices when you book.
- The museum opens every day at 9 in the morning and usually stays open until 9 on Friday evenings, though some Fridays are exceptions. Closing time moves between 5 and 6 depending on the month, so check the hours for the week you are coming.
- Book the earliest start time you can and go straight up to Floor 1. The museum takes more than 1.8 million visitors a year, and it says an average visit runs two to three hours.
- Photography is allowed as long as you leave the flash, tripod and selfie stick alone.

Official tickets: https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/visit/tickets-and-ticket-prices

The museum's own audio tour is an interactive guide in fourteen languages, for a few euros for adults and less for teenagers, free under thirteen. You add it when you book your ticket and collect it from the Audio Desk downstairs in the Atrium. This page costs nothing, needs no device and covers five paintings; the Chiaro app covers the rest of the building. Current prices are on vangoghmuseum.nl.

Official site: https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en

## Questions

**Is there a free Van Gogh Museum audio guide?**

This page is one. Five paintings, each with audio you can play straight in your browser and a transcript underneath, with the floor and the gallery named for every stop, and nothing to install. The museum's own audio tour is a paid extra. For everything beyond these five, the Chiaro app narrates whatever you photograph in front of you.

**How much is the official Van Gogh Museum audio guide?**

3.75 euros for adults, 2 euros for children aged 13 to 17, and free for children up to 12. It runs in fourteen languages, you add it to your booking at tickets.vangoghmuseum.com, and you collect it at the Audio Desk downstairs in the Atrium.

**Where is Sunflowers in the Van Gogh Museum?**

Floor 1 of the Rietveld building, in the Arles section the museum's gallery texts call Artistic Flourishing, with The Bedroom in the same section. It is the January 1889 version of the five he painted. Since 2019 the museum has ruled that it will never travel again, so it is there whenever you are.

**Is the Van Gogh Museum closed on any day?**

No, it opens every day of the week, from 9 in the morning, with Friday evenings running until 9. The closing time moves between 5 and 6 through the year, and October and December have their own timetables, so check vangoghmuseum.nl for the week you are visiting.

**Is Starry Night at the Van Gogh Museum?**

No, and the museum is asked so often that it answers this in its own list of visitor questions. The Starry Night belongs to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Amsterdam has Sunflowers, The Bedroom, Almond Blossom and Wheatfield with Crows instead.

**Can I buy Van Gogh Museum tickets at the door?**

No. The museum says plainly that it is not possible: every ticket is sold online with a start time, and that goes for free entries on a Museumkaart, ICOM card, Stadspas or Rembrandt card as well. Book at tickets.vangoghmuseum.com or through one of the resellers the museum names, because it warns that other platforms sell fraudulent tickets.

## Continue in the app

Two hundred Van Goghs are in this building. You have heard five.

This page ends here. In the app you photograph whatever is in front of you, a letter in a case, a drawing that came out of storage this month, a Gauguin in the next room, and Chiaro tells you what it is and why it is hanging there, then keeps answering out loud.

Download Chiaro: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6745618830?pt=127817940&ct=van-gogh-museum-md&mt=8