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Just over fifteen minutes from Amsterdam by train, HAARLEM is an easily absorbed city of around 150,000 people that sees itself as a cut above its neighbours and makes a good alternative base for exploring the province of North Holland, or even Amsterdam itself. The Frans Hals Museum, in the almshouse where the artist spent his last years, is worth an afternoon in itself, and there are numerous beaches within easy reach, as well as some of the best of the bulbfields.

Haarlem was one of the old Republic's most crucial centres, especially for the arts, and today retains an air of quiet affluence, with all the picturesque qualities of Amsterdam but little of the sleaze. The core of the city is Grote Markt and the adjoining Riviervischmarkt, flanked by the gabled, originally fourteenth-century Stadhuis and the impressive bulk of the Grote Kerk of St Bavo (Mon-Sat 10am-4pm; ¬1.30). Inside, the mighty Christian Müller organ of 1738, with its 5000 pipes and Baroque razzmatazz, is said to have been played by Handel and Mozart, while beneath, Xaverij's lovely group of draped marble figures represents Poetry and Music, offering thanks to the town patron for her generosity. In the choir there's a late-fifteenth-century painting traditionally (though dubiously) attributed to Geertgen tot Sint Jans, along with memorials to painters Pieter Saenredam and Frans Hals, both of whom are buried here. The town's main attraction is the Frans Hals Museum , Groot Heiligland 62 (Mon-Sat 11am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm; ¬4.50), a five-minute stroll from Grote Markt in the Oudemannhuis almshouse. It houses a good number of his lifelike seventeenth-century portraits, including (in the west wing) the "Civic Guard" portraits which established Hals' reputation. In the Officers of the Militia Company of St George (of which Hals was himself a member) he appears in the top left-hand corner, a rare self-portrait. His last, contemplative portraits include the Governors of the St Elizabeth Gasthuis , painted in 1641. Also on display are works by Gerard David, Jan Mostaert and the Haarlem Mannerists, including Carel van Mander, numerous scenes of Haarlem by Berckheyde and Saenredam, and landscapes by the Ruisdaels. Look out too for the recently restored and immaculate eighteenth-century doll's house, modelled on an Amsterdam merchant's house and one of only four of its type in the country. Hours of painstaking work were put into producing this tiny piece, at a cost reckoned at half-a-million euros.

Back at the Grote Markt, take a look at the Frans Hals Museum's annexe, De Hallen (Mon-Sat 11am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm; ¬3.40), an old meat-market building now filled with touring exhibitions and works by Haarlem-based Kees Verwey, Holland's oldest living painter, whose Impressionistic watercolours are much loved by senior Dutch aficionados. Just off the eastern side of Grote Markt, the Teylers Museum , Spaarne 16 (Tues-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun noon-5pm; ¬4.50; www.teylersmuseum.nl ), is the oldest museum in the country, founded back in 1778 by wealthy local philanthropist Pieter Teyler van der Hulst. It should appeal to scientific and artistic tastes alike, containing everything from fossils, bones and crystals to weird early sci-fi technology and sketches and line drawings by Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt and Claude. Look in on the rooms beyond, which are filled with work by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Dutch painters, principally Breitner, Israëls, Weissenbruch and Wijbrand Hendriks, who was keeper of the art collection here.