Amsterdam is a small city, and, although the concentric canal
system can be initially confusing, finding your bearings is
straightforward. The medieval core boasts the best of the city's
bustling streetlife and is home to shops, many bars and
restaurants, fanning south from the nineteenth-century Centraal
Station , one of Amsterdam's most resonant landmarks and a
focal point for urban life. Come summer there's no livelier part of
the city, as street performers compete for attention with the trams
that converge dangerously from all sides. From here, Damrak
storms into the heart of the city, an unenticing avenue lined with
overpriced restaurants and bobbing canal boats, and flanked on the
left first by the Beurs , designed at the turn of the
twentieth century by the leading light of the Dutch modern
movement, H.P. Berlage, and then by the enormous De
Bijenkorf department store.
To the left off Damrak, the infamous red-light district ,
stretching across two canals - Oudezijds (abbreviated to O.Z.)
Voorburgwal and O.Z. Achterburgwal - is one of the real sights of
the city, thronged in high season with visitors keen to discover
just how shocking it all is. Though seamy and seedy, the legalized
prostitution on flagrant display here is world-renowned. The two
canals, with their narrow connecting passages, are thronged with
neon-lit "window brothels", and at busy times the crass on-street
haggling over the price of various sex acts is drowned out by a
surprisingly festive atmosphere.
Just behind the Beurs off Warmoesstraat, the precincts of the
Oude Kerk (Mon-Sat 11am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; €3.60;
www.oudekerk.nl ) offer a reverential peace after the
excesses of the red-light district; it's a bare, mostly
fourteenth-century church with some beautifully carved misericords
in the choir and the memorial tablet of Rembrandt's first wife,
Saskia van Uylenburg. Nearby, the Amstelkring , at the
northern end of Oudezijds Voorburgwal, was once the principal
Catholic place of worship in the city and is now a museum (Mon-Sat
10am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; €4.50) commemorating the days when Catholics
had to confine their worship to the privacy of their homes. Known
as "Our Dear Lord in the Attic", it occupies the loft of a wealthy
merchant's house, together with those of two smaller houses behind
it. Just beyond, Zeedijk , once haunt of Amsterdam's drug
dealers, leads through to the open Nieuwmarkt , where the
turreted Waag was originally part of the city's
fortifications, later becoming the civic weigh-house.
Kloveniersburgwal , which leads south, was the outer of the
three eastern canals of sixteenth-century Amsterdam and boasts, on
the left, one of the city's most impressive canal houses, built for
the Trip family in 1662. Further up on the right, the
Oudemanhuispoort passage, once part of an almshouse, is now filled
with secondhand bookstalls.
At the southern end of Damrak, the Dam (or Dam Square),
where the Amstel was first dammed, is the centre of the city, its
tusk-like War Memorial serving as a meeting place for tourists. On
the western side, the Royal Palace (June-Oct daily 11am-5pm;
Nov-May opening hours variable; €4.30;
www.kon-paleisamsterdam.nl ) was originally built as the
city hall in the mid-seventeenth century. It received its royal
monicker in 1808 when Napoleon's brother Louis commandeered it as
the one building fit for a king. He was forced to abdicate in 1810,
leaving behind a sizeable amount of the Empire furniture. Vying for
importance is the adjacent Nieuwe Kerk (open only during
exhibitions; www.nieuwekerk.nl ), a fifteenth-century
structure rebuilt several times, which is now used only for
exhibitions and state occasions. Inside rest numerous names from
Dutch history, among them the seventeenth-century naval hero
Admiral de Ruyter, who lies in an opulent tomb in the choir, and
the poet Vondel, commemorated by a small urn near the entrance.
South of Dam Square, Rokin follows the old course of the
Amstel River, lined with grandiose nineteenth-century mansions.
Running parallel, Kalverstraat is a monotonous strip of
clothes shops, halfway down which, at no. 92, a gateway forms the
entrance to the former orphanage that's now the Amsterdam
Historical Museum (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat & Sun 1-5pm;
€6.10; www.ahm.nl ), where artefacts, paintings and
documents survey the city's development from the thirteenth
century. Directly outside, the glassed-in Civic Guard Gallery draws
passers-by with free glimpses of the large company portraits. Just
around the corner, off Sint Luciensteeg, the Begijnhof is a
small court of seventeenth-century buildings; the poor and elderly
led a religious life here, celebrating Mass in their own,
concealed, Catholic Church. The plain and unadorned English
Reformed Church, which takes up one side of the Begijnhof, has
pulpit panels designed by the young Piet Mondriaan. Close by, the
Spui (pronounced spow ) is a lively corner of town
whose mixture of bookshops and packed bars centres around a cloying
statue of a young boy known as 't Lieverdje (Little
Darling). In the opposite direction, Kalverstraat comes to an end
at Muntplein and the Munttoren - originally a mint and part
of the city walls, topped with a spire by Hendrik de Keyser in
1620. Across the Singel canal is the fragrant daily Flower
Market , while in the other direction Reguliersbreestraat turns
left towards the loud restaurants of Rembrandtplein . To the
south is Reguliersgracht, an appealing canal with seven distinctive
steep bridges stretching in a perspectival line from
Thorbeckeplein.