Amsterdam Directions

by Martin Dunford

  Open all day, this place in a beautiful old house on the canal has a large selection of filled pancakes from €6.75. The bigger ones are a meal in themselves.

  Prego

  Herenstraat 25; tel 020/638 0148.

  Small restaurant serving exceptionally high-quality but pricey Mediterranean cuisine from €30 or so for two courses. Polite and friendly staff.

  D’Theeboom

  Singel 210; tel 020/623 8420.

  Classic, ungimmicky French cuisine – around €30 fortwo courses.

  Top Thai

  Herenstraat 22; tel 020/ 623 4633.

  One of three Top Thai restaurants located around Amsterdam, serving inexpensive, tasty food in healthy portions. The menu gives a handy chilli rating – try the Swimming Hot Beef for total burnout. Cosy atmosphere.

  De Vliegende Schotel

  Nieuwe Leliestraat 162; tel 020/625 2041.

  Perhaps the pick of the city’s cheap and wholesome vegetarian restaurants, the "Flying Saucer" serves delicious food in large portions. Lots of space, a peaceful ambience – and a good notice board.

  Bars

  Belhamel

  Brouwersgracht 60.

  Kitschy bar/restaurant with an Art Nouveau-style interior and excellent, though costly, French food. The main attraction in summer is one of the prettiest views in Amsterdam.

  Chris

  Bloemstraat 42.

  Very proud of itself for being the Jordaan’s (and Amsterdam’s) oldest bar, dating from 1624. Comfortable, homely atmosphere.

  Duende

  Lindengracht 62.

  Wonderful little tapas bar with good, cheap tapas (from around €3) to help your drink go down. Also includes a small venue in the back for live dance and music performances, including regular flamenco.

  Gambit

  Bloemgracht 20.

  Chess bar, with boards laid out daily from 1pm until midnight.

  Hegeraad

  Noordermarkt 34.

  Lovingly maintained, old-fashioned brown café with a fiercely loyal clientele. The back room, furnished with red plush and paintings, is the perfect place to relax with a hot chocolate.

  Nol

  Westerstraat 109.

  Probably the epitome of the jolly Jordaan singing bar, a luridly lit dive that closes late, especially at weekends, when the back-slapping joviality and drunken singalongs keep you rooted until the small hours.

  De Prins

  Prinsengracht 124. Food served 10am–10pm.

  Boisterous bar with a wide range of drinks and a well-priced menu. A great place to drink in a nice part of town.

  De Reiger

  Nieuwe Leliestraat 34.

  The Jordaan’s main meeting place, an old-style café filled with modish Amsterdammers. Affordable good food.

  ’t Smalle

  Egelantiersgracht 12.

  Candle-lit and comfortable, with a barge out front for relaxed summer afternoons. One of Amsterdam’s oldest cafés, opened in 1786 as a proeflokaal – a tasting house for the (long gone) gin distillery next door.

  Spanjer & van Twist

  Leliegracht 60.

  A gentle place, which comes into its own on summer afternoons, with chairs lining one of the most peaceful stretches of water in the city centre.

  Tabac

  Brouwersgracht 101.

  Cosy drinking hole on the fringes of the Jordaan (corner of Prinsengracht), which also serves inexpensive Indonesian snacks and light dishes in a convivial atmosphere.

  De Tuin

  2e Tuindwarsstraat 13.

  The Jordaan has some marvellously unpretentious bars, and this is one of the best: agreeably unkempt and always filled with locals.

  Twee Prinsen

  Prinsenstraat 27.

  Cornerside people-watching bar that’s a useful starting place for touring the area. Its heated terrace makes it possible to sit outside even in winter.

  De Twee Zwaantjes

  Prinsengracht 114.

  Tiny Jordaan bar whose live accordion music and raucous singing you’ll either love or hate. Fun, in an oompah-pah sort of way.

  Gay bars

  COC

  Rozenstraat 14; tel 020/626 3087, www.coc.nl.

  Successful women-only disco and café, popular with younger lesbians, held every Sat from 8–10pm and called "Just Girls". Pumping on Friday nights too, but then it’s mixed men and women. COC is the headquarters of the Netherlands’ national gay organization.

  Saarein

  Elandsstraat 119; tel 020/623 4901. Closed Mon.

  Known for years for its stringent women-only policy, Saarein has now opened its doors to men. Though some of the former glory of this café is gone, it’s still a warm, relaxing place to take it easy, with a cheerful atmosphere. Also a useful starting point for contacts and information.

  Clubs and venues

  Mazzo

  Rozengracht 114; tel 020/626 7500, www.mazzo.nl. Open Thurs–Sun. 23yrs+ only.

  One of the city’s hippest clubs, with a choice of music to appeal to all tastes. Perhaps the easiest-going bouncers in town.

  The Old Jewish Quarter and Eastern Docks

  Originally one of the marshiest parts of Amsterdam, the narrow slice of land sandwiched between the curve of the River Amstel, Kloveniersburgwal and the Nieuwe Herengracht was the home of Amsterdam’s Jews from the sixteenth century up until World War II. By the 1920s, this Old Jewish Quarter, aka the Jodenhoek ("Jews’ Corner"), was one of the busiest parts of town, crowded with tenement buildings and smoking factories, its main streets holding scores of open-air stalls selling everything from pickled herrings to pots and pans. The war put paid to all this and in 1945 it lay derelict. Postwar redevelopment has not treated it kindly. New building has robbed the district of much of its character and its focal point, Waterlooplein, has been overwhelmed by a whopping town and concert hall complex, which caused much controversy. The once-bustling Jodenbreestraat is now bleak and very ordinary, with Mr Visserplein, at its east end, one of the city’s busiest traffic junctions. Picking your way round these obstacles is not much fun, but persevere – amongst the cars and concrete are several moving reminders of the Jewish community that perished in the war. Next door is the Plantagebuurt, a well-to-do residential area that’s home to the Artis Zoo and the excellent Verzetsmuseum (Dutch Resistance Museum), and from here it’s a short hop north to the reclaimed islands of the Oosterdok, where pride of place goes to the Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum (Maritime Museum).

  St Antoniesbreestraat

  Stretching south from Nieuwmarkt, St Antoniesbreestraat once linked the city centre with the Jewish quarter, but its huddle of shops and houses was mostly demolished in the 1980s to make way for a main road. The plan was subsequently abandoned, but the modern buildings that now line most of the street hardly fire the soul, even if the modern symmetries – and cubist, coloured panels – of the apartment blocks that spill along part of the street are visually arresting.

  The Pintohuis

  St Antoniesbreestraat 69. Mon & Wed 2–8pm, Fri 2–5pm, Sat 11am–4pm. Free.

  One of the few survivors of the development is the Pintohuis, which is now a public library. Easily spotted by its off-white Italianate facade, the mansion is named after Isaac de Pinto, a Jew who fled Portugal to escape the Inquisition and subsequently became a founder of the East India Company. Pinto bought the property in 1651 and promptly had it remodelled in grand style, the facade interrupted by six lofty pilasters, which lead the eye up to the blind balustrade. The mansion was the talk of the town, even more so when Pinto had the interior painted in a similar style to the front – pop in to look at the birds and cherubs of the original painted ceiling.

  The Zuiderkerk

  Mon 11am–4pm, Tues, Wed & Fri 9am–4pm, Thurs 9am–8pm. Free.

  The Zuiderkerk dates from 1611 and was designed by the prolific architect and sculptor Hendrick de Keyser, whose distinctive – and very popular – style extrapolated elements of traditional Flemish design, with fa
nciful detail and frilly towers added wherever possible. The basic design of the Zuiderkerk is firmly Gothic, but the soaring tower is typical of his work, complete with balconies and balustrades, arches and columns. Now deconsecrated, the church has itself been turned into a municipal information centre with displays on housing and the environment, plus temporary exhibitions revealing the city council’s future plans. The tower, which has a separate entrance, can be climbed during the summer (June–Sept Wed–Sat 2–4pm; €3).

  The Rembrandthuis

  Jodenbreestraat 6. Mon–Sat 10am–5pm, Sun 1–5pm. €7.

  St Antoniesbreestraat runs into Jodenbreestraat, the "Broad Street of the Jews", at one time the main centre of Jewish activity. This ancient thoroughfare is short on charm, but it is home to the Rembrandthuis, whose intricate facade is decorated by pretty wooden shutters and a dinky pediment. Rembrandt bought this house at the height of his fame and popularity, living here for over twenty years and spending a fortune on furnishings – an expense that ultimately contributed to his bankruptcy. An inventory made at the time details the huge collection of paintings, sculptures and art treasures he’d amassed, almost all of which was auctioned off after he was declared insolvent and forced to move to a more modest house in the Jordaan in 1658.

  The city council bought the Jodenbreestraat house in 1907 and has revamped the premises on several occasions, most recently in 1999. A visit begins in the modern building next door, but you’re soon into the string of period rooms that have been returned to something like their appearance when Rembrandt lived here, with the inventory as a guide. The period furniture is enjoyable enough, especially the two box-beds, and the great man’s studio is surprisingly large and well-lit, but the paintings that adorn the walls are almost entirely mediocre and there are no Rembrandts at all. More positively, two rooms beyond the period rooms hold an extensive collection of Rembrandt’s etchings as well as several of the original copper plates on which he worked, and beyond them two further rooms are used for well-judged temporary displays of prints, usually – but not exclusively – by Dutch artists. To see Rembrandt’s paintings you’ll have to go to the Rijksmuseum.

  The Holland Experience

  Jodenbreestraat 4 www.holland-experience.nl. Daily 10am–6pm. €8.50.

  The multimedia Holland Experience is a kind of sensory-bombardment movie about Holland and Amsterdam, with synchronized smells and a moving floor – not to mention the special 3D glasses. The experience lasts thirty minutes and is especially popular with school kids.

  Gassan Diamonds

  Nieuwe Uilenburgerstraat 173; tel 020/622 5333, www.gassandiamonds.com. Frequent 1hr guided tours daily 9am–5pm. Free.

  Gassan Diamonds occupies a large and imposing brick building dating from 1897. Before World War II, many local Jews worked as diamond cutters and polishers, though there’s little sign of the industry here today, this factory being the main exception. Tours include a visit to the cutting and polishing areas as well a gambol round Gassan’s diamond jewellery showroom; there’s also a Delftware shop immediately outside the factory’s main doors.

  The Stadhuis en Muziektheater

  tel 020/625 5455, www.muziektheater.nl.

  Jodenbreestraat runs parallel to the Stadhuis en Muziektheater, a sprawling and rather undistinguished complex incorporating the city hall and an auditorium that was completed in 1986. The theatre’s resident company, Netherlands Opera, offers the fullest, and most reasonably priced, programme of opera in Amsterdam. Tickets go very quickly, especially for the free lunchtime concerts held from September to May. One of the city’s abiding ironies is that the title of the protest campaign aiming to prevent the development – "Stopera" – has passed into common usage to describe the finished item. Inside, amidst all the architectural mediocrity, there are a couple of minor attractions, beginning with the glass columns in the public passageway towards the rear of the complex. These give a salutary lesson on the fragility of the Netherlands: two contain water indicating the sea levels in the Dutch towns of Vlissingen and IJmuiden (below knee level), while another records the levels experienced during the 1953 flood disaster (way above head height). Downstairs a concrete pile shows what is known as "Normal Amsterdam Level" (NAP), originally calculated in 1684 as the average water level in the river IJ and still the basis for measuring altitude above sea level across Europe.

  Waterlooplein

  The indeterminate modernity of the Stadhuis complex dominates Waterlooplein, a rectangular parcel of land that was originally swampy marsh. This was the site of the first Jewish Quarter, but by the late nineteenth century it had become an insanitary slum. The slums were cleared in the 1880s and thereafter the open spaces of the Waterlooplein hosted the largest and liveliest market in the city, the place where Jews and Gentiles met to trade. In the war, the Germans used the square to round up their victims, but despite these ugly connotations the Waterlooplein was revived in the 1950s as the site of the city’s main flea market (Mon–Sat 9am–5pm) and remains so to this day. It’s nowhere near as large as it once was, but nonetheless it’s still the final resting place of many a pair of yellow corduroy flares and has some wonderful antique/junk stalls to root through – secondhand vinyl too.

  Mr Visserplein

  Just behind the Muziektheater, on the corner of Mr Visserplein, is the Mozes en Aaron Kerk, a rather glum Neoclassical structure built on the site of a clandestine Catholic church in the 1840s. It takes its unusual name from a pair of facade stones bearing effigies of the two prophets that decorated an earlier building which it replaced. Earlier still, the site was occupied by the house where the philosopher and theologian Spinoza was born in 1632. The square itself, a busy junction for traffic speeding towards the IJ tunnel, takes its name from Mr Visser, President of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands in 1939. He was dismissed the following year when the Germans occupied the country, and became an active member of the Jewish resistance, working for the illegal underground newspaper Het Parool ("The Password") and refusing to wear the yellow Star of David. He died in 1942, a few days after publicly – and famously – denouncing all forms of collaboration.

  The Esnoga

  Mr Visserplein. Sun–Fri 10am–4pm; closed Yom Kippur. €5.

  The brown and bulky brickwork of the Esnoga or Portuguese synagogue was completed in 1675 for the city’s Sephardic community. One of Amsterdam’s most imposing buildings, it has been barely altered since its construction, its lofty interior following the Sephardic tradition in having the Hechal (the Ark of the Covenant) and tebah (from where services are led) at opposite ends. Also traditional is the seating, with two sets of wooden benches (for the men) facing each other across the central aisle – the women have separate galleries up above. A set of superb brass chandeliers holds the candles that remain the only source of artificial light. When it was completed, the synagogue was one of the largest in the world, its congregation almost certainly the richest; today, the Sephardic community has dwindled to just a few dozen members, most of whom live outside the city centre. In one of the outhouses, a video sheds light on the history of the synagogue and Amsterdam’s Sephardim; the mystery is why the Germans left it alone – no one knows for sure, but it seems likely that they intended to turn it into a museum once all the Jews had been polished off.

  Jonas Daniel Meijerplein

  Jonas Daniel Meijerplein was where in February 1941 around 400 Jewish men were forcibly loaded up on trucks and taken to their deaths at Mauthausen concentration camp, in reprisal for the killing of a Dutch Nazi during a street fight. The arrests sparked off the February Strike, a general strike in protest against the Germans’ treatment of the Jews. It was organized by the outlawed Communist Party and spearheaded by Amsterdam’s transport workers and dockers – a rare demonstration of solidarity with the Jews whose fate was usually accepted without visible protest in all of occupied Europe. The strike was quickly suppressed, but is still commemorated by an annual wreath-laying ceremony on February 25, as well as by Mari
Andriessen’s statue of the Dokwerker (Dockworker) here on the square.

  Joods Historisch Museum

  J.D. Meijerplein, www.jhm.nl. Daily 11am–5pm, closed Yom Kippur. €6.50.

  The Joods Historisch Museum – the Jewish Historical Museum – is cleverly located in four Ashkenazi synagogues dating from the late seventeenth century. For years after the war these buildings lay abandoned, but they were finally refurbished – and connected by walkways – in the 1980s to accommodate a Jewish resource centre and exhibition area. The latter is located in the handsome Grote Synagoge of 1671 and features a fairly small but wide-ranging collection covering most aspects of Dutch Jewish life. Downstairs, in the main body of the synagogue, is a fine collection of religious silverware as well as a handful of paintings and all manner of antique artefacts illustrating religious customs and practices. The gallery above holds a social history of the city’s Jews, tracing their prominent role in a wide variety of industries, and examining the trauma of World War II, complete with several especially moving photographs.

  The Plantagebuurt

  Developed in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Plantagebuurt, with its comfortable streets spreading to either side of Plantage Middenlaan boulevard, was built as part of a concerted attempt to provide good-quality housing for the city’s expanding middle classes. Although it was never as fashionable as the older residential parts of the Grachtengordel, the new district did contain elegant villas and spacious terraces, making it a first suburban port of call for many aspiring Jews. Nowadays, the Plantagebuurt is still one of the more prosperous parts of the city, in a modest sort of way, and boasts two especially enjoyable attractions – the Hortus Botanicus botanical gardens and the Verzetsmuseum (Dutch Resistance Museum).

  Hortus Botanicus

  Plantage Middenlaan 2a. Mon–Fri 9am–5pm, Sat & Sun 10am–5pm; closes 4pm in Dec & Jan. €6.

  Amsterdam’s Hortus Botanicus botanical gardens were founded in 1682 as medicinal gardens for the use of the city’s physicians and apothecaries. Thereafter, many of the city’s merchants made a point of bringing back exotic species from the East, the result being the 6000-odd plant species exhibited today. The gardens are divided into several distinct sections. Outside are twenty four distinctive types of tree, each clearly labelled and its location pinpointed by a map available at the entrance kiosk. There’s also a three-climates glasshouse, where the plants are arranged according to their geographical origins, a palm house, a Californian desert hothouse, an orchid nursery and a butterfly house. It’s all very low-key – and none the worse for that – and the gardens make a relaxing break on any tour of central Amsterdam, especially as the café, in the old orangery, serves up tasty sandwiches, coffee and cakes from 11am to 3pm.