Amsterdam Directions Read online

  Toren

  Lovely, moderately priced canal house hotel.

  See THE GRACHTENGORDEL

  Museums

  Amsterdam excels with its museums – a huge variety, from restored aristocratic houses to museums devoted to history, science, shipping and ethnography. Bear in mind that most, especially those that are state-run, are shut on Mondays.

  Nederlands Scheepvaart Museum

  Homage to the Dutch mastery of the sea housed by the water in the old navy arsenal.

  See THE OLD JEWISH QUARTER AND EASTERN DOCKS

  Amsterdams Historisch Museum

  The civic guard portraits of the Schuttersgalerij here provide an excellent introduction to this museum devoted to the life and times of the city.

  See THE OLD CENTRE

  Verzetsmuseum

  This museum brilliantly charts the history of the Dutch resistance to the Nazis through a mixture of public and private exhibits.

  See THE OLD JEWISH QUARTER AND EASTERN DOCKS

  Museum Van Loon

  Probably the best-preserved seventeenth-century canal house in the city.

  See THE GRACHTENGORDEL

  Museum Willet-Holthuysen

  A glimpse of changing styles over the years since this canal house was built in 1685.

  See THE GRACHTENGORDEL

  Musical Amsterdam

  There’s no shortage of classical music concerts in Amsterdam, with two major orchestras based in the city, plus regular visits by touring outfits. Some of the city’s churches host regular concerts, and there is top-notch opera, too, at the Muziektheater and Stadsschouwburg.

  Concertgebouw

  Home to the eponymous orchestra, and generally reckoned to have some of the best acoustics in the world.

  See THE MUSEUM QUARTER AND THE VONDELPARK

  Stadsschouwburg

  Theatre dance and opera predominate at this venue.

  See THE GRACHTENGORDEL

  Carré Theatre

  Grand old building on the Amstel that hosts everything from musicals to opera.

  See THE GRACHTENGORDEL

  Waalse Kerk

  A lovely venue for evening chamber concerts.

  See THE OLD CENTRE

  Getting around

  Almost all of Amsterdam’s leading attractions are clustered in or near the city centre, within easy walking distance of each other. For longer jaunts, the city has a first-rate public transport system, comprising trams, buses, a pint-sized metro and numerous water-bourne alternatives. You might also want to do as the locals do and rent a bicycle: there are plenty of rental outlets, and with its well-integrated system of bicycle lanes, it couldn’t be easier – or safer.

  Museumboot/Canal buses

  Canal boats link the major museums and other sights.

  See ESSENTIALS

  Bicycles

  Get around like a local by renting a bike for the day.

  See ESSENTIALS

  Canal Bikes

  These four-seater pedaloes can be rented by the hour, but it can take an age to get anywhere.

  See ESSENTIALS

  Trams

  The city’s fifteen or so tram routes are the quickest way to get around the city.

  See ESSENTIALS

  Places

  The Old Centre

  The Grachtengordel

  The western canals and the Jordaan

  The Old Jewish Quarter and Eastern Docks

  The Museum Quarter and the Vondelpark

  The Outer Districts

  Day-trips from Amsterdam

  The Old Centre

  Amsterdam’s most vivacious district, the Old Centre is an oval-shaped affair whose tangle of antique streets and narrow canals is confined in the north by the River IJ and to the west and south by the Singel, the first of several canals that once girdled the entire city. Given the dominance of Centraal Station on most transport routes, this is where you’ll almost certainly arrive. From here a stroll across the bridge will take you onto the Damrak, which divided the Oude Zijde (Old Side) of the medieval city to the east from the smaller Nieuwe Zijde (New Side) to the west. It also led – and leads – to the heart of the Old Centre, Dam Square, the site of the city’s most imperial building, the Koninklijk Paleis (Royal Palace). The handsome seventeenth- and eighteenth-century canal houses that are more typical of the Old Centre are mostly concentrated in the Oude Zijde, which is also home to the world-famous Red-Light District.

  Centraal Station

  With its high gables and cheerful brickwork, Centraal Station is an imposing prelude to the city, built in the 1880s when it aroused much controversy because it effectively separated the centre from the River IJ, source of the city’s wealth, for the first time in Amsterdam’s long history. Outside, Stationsplein is a breezy open space, edged by ovals of water, packed with trams and dotted with barrel organs and chip stands, with street performers completing the picture in the summer.

  St Nicolaaskerk

  Prins Hendrikkade. Mon & Sat noon–3pm, Tues–Fri 11am–4pm. Free.

  The city’s foremost Catholic church, with whopping twin towers and a cavernous interior. Above the altar is the crown of the Habsburg Emperor Maximilian, very much a symbol of the city and one you’ll see again and again.

  Damrak

  Running from Centraal Station to Dam square, Damrak was a canal until 1672, when it was filled in – much to the relief of the locals, who were tired of the stink. Formerly, the canal had been the city’s main nautical artery, with boats sailing up it to discharge their goods right in the centre of town on Dam square. Thereafter, with the docks moved elsewhere, Damrak became a busy commercial drag, as it remains today, a wide but unenticing avenue lined with tacky restaurants, bars and bureaux de change.

  The Beurs van Berlage

  Damrak www.beursvanberlage.nl. Usually Tues–Sun 11am–5pm.

  The imposing bulk of the Beurs – the old Stock Exchange – is a seminal work designed at the turn of the twentieth century by the leading light of the Dutch modern movement, Hendrik Petrus Berlage. Berlage re-routed Dutch architecture with this building, forsaking the historicism that had dominated the nineteenth century and opting for a style with cleaner, heavier lines. The Beurs has long since lost its commercial function and today it’s used for exhibitions, concerts and conferences, which means that sometimes you can go in, sometimes you can’t. Inside, the main hall is distinguished by the graceful lines of its exposed ironwork and its shallow-arched arcades as well as the fanciful frieze celebrating the stockbroker’s trade.

  Dam square

  It was Dam square that gave Amsterdam its name: in the thirteenth century the River Amstel was dammed here, and the fishing village that grew around it became known as "Amstelredam". Boats could sail into the square down the Damrak and unload right in the middle of the settlement, which soon prospered by trading herrings for Baltic grain. Today it’s an open and airy but somehow rather desultory square, despite – or perhaps partly because of – the presence of the main municipal war memorial, a prominent stone tusk adorned by bleak, suffering figures and decorated with the coats of arms of each of the Netherlands’ provinces (plus the ex-colony of Indonesia). The Amsterdam branch of Madame Tussaud’s waxworks is on the Dam, at no. 20 (daily: July–Aug 9.30am–8.30pm; Sept to June 10am–6.30pm; last entry 1hr before closing; €22.50, children 5–15 €10, over 60s €17.50; www.madametussauds.nl).

  The Koninklijk Paleis

  Dam; tel 020/620 4060, www.koninklijkhuis.nl. Hours vary, but normally include Tues–Thurs 12.30–5pm. €4.50.

  Dominating Dam square is the Koninklijk Paleis (Royal Palace), though the title is deceptive, given that this vast sandstone structure started out as the city’s Stadhuis (town hall), and only had its first royal occupant when Louis Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, moved in during the French occupation. At the time of the building’s construction in the mid-seventeenth century, Amsterdam was at the height of its powers and the city council craved a residence that was
a suitable declaration of its wealth and independence. They opted for a progressive design by Jacob van Campen, and in 1648 work started on what was then the largest town hall in Europe, supported by no less than 13,659 wooden piles driven into the Dam’s sandy soil.

  The exterior is very much to the allegorical point with depictions of Amsterdam as a port and trading centre, that at the front presided over by Neptune and a veritable herd of unicorns. Above these panels are representations of the values the city council espoused – at the front, Prudence, Justice and Peace, to the rear Temperance, and Vigilance to either side of a muscular, globe-carrying Atlas. One deliberate precaution, however, was the omission of a central doorway – just in case the mob turned nasty and stormed the place.

  Inside, the Citizen’s Hall is the most remarkable room, a handsome arcaded marble chamber where the enthroned figure of Amsterdam looks down on three circular maps, one each of the eastern and western hemispheres, the other of the northern sky. Other allegorical figures ram home the municipal point: flanking "Amsterdam" are strength and wisdom and on the left the god Amphion plays his lyre to persuade the stones to pile themselves up into a wall as an example of good government. There are witty touches too – cocks fight above the entrance to the Commissioner of Petty Affairs, while Apollo, god of the sun and the arts, brings harmony to the disputes; and a relief in the Bankruptcy Chamber shows the Fall of Icarus, surrounded by marble carvings depicting hungry rats scurrying around an empty chest and unpaid bills.

  The Nieuwe Kerk

  Dam; tel 020/638 6909, www.nieuwekerk.nl. Daily 10am–6pm.

  Vying for importance with the Royal Palace is the adjacent Nieuwe Kerk, which despite its name – literally "new church" – is an early fifteenth-century structure built in a late flourish of the Gothic style, with a forest of pinnacles and high, slender gables. The interior is a hangar-like affair, now de-sanctified and used for temporary exhibitions. Amongst a scattering of decorative highlights, look out for the seventeenth-century tomb of Dutch naval hero Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, complete with trumpeting angels, conch-blowing Neptunes and cherubs all in a tizzy. Ruyter was buried here with full military honours and the church is still used for state occasions: the coronations of queens Wilhelmina, Juliana and, in 1980, Beatrix, were all held here.

  Magna Plaza

  Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, www.magnaplaza.nl. Daily 10am–7pm.

  Behind the Royal Palace, you can’t miss the old neo-Gothic post office of 1899, now converted into the Magna Plaza shopping mall. The building is a grand affair, and makes an attractive setting for numerous clothes chains that now inhabit its red-brick interior.

  The Red-Light District

  The area immediately to the east of Damrak is the Red Light District, known locally as "De Walletjes" (Small Walls) on account of the series of low brick walls that contains its canals. The district stretches across the two narrow canals that once marked the eastern part of medieval Amsterdam, Oudezijds Voorburgwal and Oudezijds Achterburgwal. Effectively the main drags of the Red-Light area, both of these streets are distinctly seedy, though the legalized prostitution here has long been one of the city’s most distinctive draws.

  The two canals, with their narrow connecting passages, are thronged with "window brothels" and at busy times the crass, on-street haggling over the price of sex is drowned out by a surprisingly festive atmosphere – entire families grinning more or less amiably at the women in the windows or discussing the specifications (and feasibility) of the sex toys in the shops. There’s a nasty undertow to the district though, oddly enough sharper during the daytime, when the pimps hang out in shifty gangs and drug addicts wait anxiously, assessing the chances of scoring their next hit. Don’t even think about taking a picture of a "window brothel" unless you’re prepared for some major grief from the camera-shy prostitutes.

  Oude Kerk

  Oudekerksplain. Mon–Sat 11am–5pm, Sun 1–5pm. €4.

  The Gothic Oude Kerk is the city’s most appealing church. There’s been a church on this site since the middle of the thirteenth century, but most of the present building dates from a century later, funded by the pilgrims who came here in their hundreds following a widely publicized miracle. The story goes that, in 1345, a dying man regurgitated the Host he had received here at Communion and when it was thrown on the fire afterwards, it did not burn. The unburnable Host was placed in a chest and eventually installed here, and although it disappeared during the Reformation, thousands of the faithful still come to take part in the annual commemorative Stille Omgang in mid-March, a silent nocturnal procession terminating at the Oude Kerk. Inside you can see the unadorned memorial tablet of Rembrandt’s first wife, Saskia van Uylenburg, and three beautifully coloured stained-glass windows beside the ambulatory dating from the 1550s. They depict, from left to right, the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Dormition of the Virgin.

  The Amstelkring

  Oudezijds Voorburgwal 40. Mon–Sat 10am–5pm, Sun 1–5pm. €7.

  The front of the Oude Kerk overlooks the northern reaches of Oudezijds Voorburgwal, whose handsome facades recall ritzier days when this was one of the wealthiest parts of the city, richly earning its nickname the "Velvet Canal". A few metres north of the Oude Kerk is the clandestine Amstelkring, a former Catholic church, now one of Amsterdam’s most enjoyable museums. The Amstelkring – "Amstel Circle" – is named after the group of nineteenth-century historians who saved the building from demolition, but its proper name is Ons Lieve Heer Op Solder ("Our Dear Lord in the Attic"). The church dates from the early seventeenth century when, with the Protestants firmly in control, the city’s Catholics were only allowed to practise their faith in secret – as here in this clandestine church, which occupies the loft of a wealthy merchant’s house. The church’s narrow nave has been skilfully shoehorned into the available space and, flanked by elegant balconies, there’s just enough room for an ornately carved organ at one end and a mock-marble high altar, decorated with Jacob de Wit’s mawkish Baptism of Christ, at the other. The rest of the house is similarly untouched, its original furnishings reminiscent of interiors by Vermeer or De Hooch.

  Nieuwmarkt

  The Nieuwmarkt, a wide open cobbled square that was long one of the city’s most important markets, has as its main focus the multi-turreted Waag, a delightful building dating from the 1480s, when it served as one of the city’s fortified gates, Sint Antoniespoort, before being turned into a municipal weighing-house (waag), with the rooms upstairs taken over by the surgeons’ guild. It was here that the surgeons held lectures on anatomy and public dissections, the inspiration for Rembrandt’s famous Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp. The waag has now been converted into a café-bar and restaurant, In de Waag.

  Leaving the Nieuwmarkt, there’s a choice of three tempting routes: southeast along St Antoniesbreestraat to the Old Jewish Quarter; south along Kloveniersburgwal to the Trippenhuis and the Hash Museum; and north along Geldersekade to the Schreierstoren and the Stedelijk Museum.

  The Schreierstoren

  Geldersekade.

  Squat Schreierstoren (Weepers’ Tower) is a rare surviving chunk of the city’s medieval wall. Originally, the tower overlooked the River IJ and it was here that women gathered to watch their menfolk sail away – hence its name. An old and badly weathered stone plaque inserted in the wall is a reminder of all those sad goodbyes, and another much more recent plaque recalls the departure of Henry Hudson from here in 1609, when he stumbled across an island the locals called Manhattan.

  Het Scheepvaarthuis

  Prins Hendrikkade 108.

  Completed in 1917, this almost neurotic edifice is covered with a welter of decoration celebrating the city’s marine connections – the entrance is shaped like the prow of a ship, and surmounted by statues of Poseidon and his wife and representations of the four points of the compass.

  Stedelijk Museum

  Oosterdokskade 3; tel 020/573 2737, www.stedelijk.nl. No opening times available at time of going to pri
nt. €8.

  The Stedelijk Museum has long been Amsterdam’s number-one venue for modern art. Its permanent collection is wide-ranging and its temporary exhibitions are usually of international standard. It’s been housed in a large old building on Paulus Potterstraat out near the Rijksmuseum for years, but its old home is presently being gutted and won’t be open again until 2008. In the meantime, the former postal building on Oosterdokskade near Centraal Station has been pressed into service to accommodate the main body of the permanent collection. It seems a good choice – the building is a fetching office block dating from the 1960s – for a permanent collection that includes drawings by Picasso, Matisse and their contemporaries, and paintings by Manet, Monet, Bonnard, Ensor, Cézanne, and of course Mondriaan, from his early, muddy-coloured abstractions to the cool, boldly coloured rectangular blocks for which he’s most famous. The museum also has a good sample of the work of Kasimir Malevich, his dense attempts at Cubism leading to the dynamism and bold, primary tones of his "Suprematist" paintings, several Marc Chagall paintings, and a number of pictures by American Abstract Expressionists Mark Rothko, Ellsworth Kelly and Barnett Newman, plus works by other American artists – Lichtenstein, Warhol, Jean Dubuffet.

  Kloveniersburgwal

  Nieuwmarkt lies at the northern end of Kloveniersburgwal, a long, dead-straight waterway framed by a string of old and dignified facades that was the outermost of the three eastern canals of the medieval city. One house of special note here is the Trippenhuis, at no. 29, a huge overblown mansion complete with Corinthian pilasters and a grand frieze built for the Trip family in 1662. One of the richest families in Amsterdam, the Trips were long a powerful force among the Magnificat, the clique of families (Six, Trip, Hooft and Pauw) who shared power during the city’s Golden Age. Almost directly opposite, on the west bank of the canal, the Kleine Trippenhuis, at no. 26, is, by contrast, one of the narrowest houses in Amsterdam, albeit with a warmly carved facade with a balustrade featuring centaurs and sphinxes. Legend asserts that Mr Trip’s coachman was so taken aback by the size of the new family mansion that he exclaimed he would be happy with a home no wider than the Trips’ front door – which is exactly what he got; his reaction to his new lodgings is not recorded.