Getting there
Leiden is easy to reach
Leiden is ideally located within a short travelling distance of major centres such as The Hague and Amsterdam. The city can also be reached easily by international visitors, with Schiphol Airport just 20 minutes away and Rotterdam’s smaller airport at 25 minutes distance. Leiden is within ten kilometres of Holland’s North Sea coast.
By car
Leiden is located between the A4 and A44 motorways, which makes it easy to reach by car. The city centre is a pedestrian-only area, but visitors will find space for more than 3,000 cars in the many small and large car parks and garages spread around the periphery of the centre.
Haagweg car park
Leiden’s biggest car park is on the Haagweg, and provides full park-and-ride services to the city centre. During the daytime and in the evenings, shuttle buses will take you from the car park to all the main spots in the city – and bring you back, of course. Special arrangements can be made for groups, so that you can always be sure of transport to the city centre. For more information:www.stadsparkeerplan.com.
Parking in the city centre
Parking in the city centre is possible, for example in Bearded market parking garage. Discover the deepest parking garage of Netherlands. It’s a few minutes walk from the city centre with museums, shops, restaurants and theater. The 22-meter deep garage has a capacity for 525 cars, with special family places, charging ability for electric cars and a number of disabled parking spaces. In an 8-minute walk from the city centre. To find out more about parking in Leiden, click here.
Public transportation
Dutch public transport requires a so-called OV-chipkaart, a smart card that can be used for bus, tram, train and metro services. Since there is no specific OV-chipkaart for visitor, we recommend using either a single-use chipcard or an ‘anonymous OV-chipkaart’. The single-use chipcard has limited validity and can be used to travel on bus/tram/metro lines in a single city. If you want to travel by train, you can buy a different single-use chipcard that is valid on the train for your specified itinerary only. If you are staying in Holland for more than a few days and plan to travel by public transport more frequently, we recommend the anonymous OV-chipkaart as the best and most economic ticket for your trips since it can be used for all public means of transport in Holland. More information about getting an ov chip kaart.
Walking
For your convenience: this map will show you how to walk to the venues of the pre-conference, the main conference and Naturalis Biodiversity Center:
