Aalsmeer Flower Auction - a colorful way to spend a morning

If you can drag yourself out of bed early enough, you should definitely consider a morning visit to the famous flower auction in the city of Aalsmeer, which is just south of Schiphol Airport and easy to reach on a public bus. These days it’s officially run by Royal FloraHolland, the growers’ cooperative formed when the Aalsmeer auction merged with FloraHolland in 2007-2008, but everyone speaks English so asking about the Aalsmeer Flower Auction will still get the job done. This is one of the more popular day trips from Amsterdam, and is well worth a few hours if you’ll be in town more than a day or two.

The largest building in the world

Many buildings claim to be the largest building in the world, and the Aalsmeer Flower Auction used to hold that title fair and square. It was the biggest building on the planet by footprint until 2008, when newer giants started passing it, and it now sits somewhere around fifth. It still covers about 860,000 m² (9.3 million sq ft) and once you see its open floor plan you’ll notice that it’s difficult to even see the other end of the building once inside.

The world’s largest flower auction

Flowers are huge business in the Netherlands and Aalsmeer is the center of that business. Every weekday they sell around 20 million flowers in this enormous structure, which adds up to about €2 billion each year. It used to be even a greater percentage, but this single structure accounts for just over one-third of all flowers sold in the world.

Many of the flowers in the Aalsmeer Market are grown in the Netherlands, but many of them are grown in faraway places like Kenya, Uganda, and Israel. About 6,000 growers sell to over 2,000 buyers through what is known as a Dutch auction.

Here’s a tour of the Aalsmeer Flower Auction with Rick Steves:

Visiting the Aalsmeer Flower Auction

The action never stops in Aalsmeer, except on weekends, but the peak of what is fascinating for visitors occurs each weekday morning. The visitor centre opens at 7 a.m. and closes at 11 a.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, but only until 9 a.m. on Thursday, and the earlier you get there the more you’ll see, since the trading stops once everything is sold. There are five separate auction bays and visitors can see them all on a catwalk suspended about 20 feet above the trading floor.

You arrive through the Visitor’s Center where you’ll get some printed information about the goings on. The old audio boxes are gone, but there are numbered pink signs along the route, and the free izi.TRAVEL app gives you a short explanation of what you are looking down at for each number, in seven languages including English, of course.

As each lot goes on sale, the price on a huge board starts at 100 and then goes down until the lot is sold. This special kind of auction was invented here, and it is a very fast way of getting the highest price out of the dealer who wants the lot the most.

Aside from the auctions you’ll see this unbelievably huge warehouse just loaded with flowers and plants, with little carts wheeling them back and forth and employees on bicycles as a way of dealing efficiently with the vast distances within the building.

Getting there

The 172 no longer does this run. Now it’s bus 357, which starts at the Elandsgracht bus station on the edge of the Jordaan and stops right outside the Royal FloraHolland entrance. You can also catch the 357 at Leidseplein or Museumplein on the way for a journey that is a bit shorter.

Admission

Tickets are sold through the Royal FloraHolland ticket shop, where you can check the current prices. Forget the €4.50 this used to cost, it’s been a lot more than that for years.