Netherlands · Provincie Noord-Holland · Amsterdam
Amsterdam-Zuidoost, Amsterdam — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Amsterdam-Zuidoost is Amsterdam's southeastern borough, widely called the Bijlmer. It gathers four residential areas (Bijlmermeer, Venserpolder, Gaasperdam and Driemond) with the Amstel III business park and the Amsterdam Arena entertainment and shopping district. The borough sits apart from the rest of the city, an exclave reached across Duivendrecht and Diemen. Its best-known landmark is World of Ajax at the Amsterdam Arena.
About Amsterdam-Zuidoost
Where to stay in Amsterdam-Zuidoost
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Zuidoost is a residential and business borough rather than a historic sightseeing quarter, so hotel choice is narrow and practical. Most beds cluster around the Amstel III business park and the Amsterdam Arena entertainment and shopping district, handy for concerts, matches and trade fairs. The metro links the area to central Amsterdam in about a quarter of an hour, so a room here trades canal views for space and lower rates.
Sightseers should stay in central Amsterdam instead. For an event at the Arena, though, staying in Zuidoost is hard to beat.
About Amsterdam-Zuidoost
What are the main landmarks in Amsterdam-Zuidoost?
The football club's museum, World of Ajax, sits inside the Amsterdam Arena and pulls the biggest crowds. The borough also keeps two unusual museums. Museum Vrolik shows an anatomical collection at the teaching hospital, while the open-air Bijlmermuseum preserves a stretch of the original honeycomb flats that defined the Bijlmer.
The El Al Flight 1862 memorial marks where a cargo jet struck two apartment blocks. Churches serve the area's many communities, among them the Sint-Urbanuskerk, De Kandelaar and the Wi Eegi church, while the Pa Sembrug footbridge crosses the green between the housing blocks.
What is the history of Amsterdam-Zuidoost?
Amsterdam laid out the Bijlmermeer in the 1960s as a modernist estate, its high-rise blocks set to one honeycomb plan with car roads raised above the walkways. One plan shaped the whole estate. In 1992 a cargo jet crashed into two of the apartment blocks, the borough's defining disaster, remembered at the El Al Flight 1862 memorial.
Renewal over later decades cleared or rebuilt many original blocks, while the Bijlmermuseum preserves a surviving stretch of the honeycomb design. The area's many churches, among them the Wi Eegi church and De Kandelaar, grew alongside its varied communities.
Where is Amsterdam-Zuidoost?
Zuidoost occupies Amsterdam's far southeastern corner. The borough falls within the province of Noord-Holland, yet it is an exclave, cut off from the rest of the city by the municipalities of Duivendrecht and Diemen. Inside it, Bijlmermeer and Venserpolder lie northwest, Gaasperdam spreads south, and the village of Driemond sits farthest east.
The Amstel III business park and the Amsterdam Arena district anchor its western side.
Good for
More areas in Amsterdam
Updated July 2026