Amsterdam
A city planned onto the water
Amsterdam was drawn before it was built. The ring of canals everyone photographs was a single seventeenth-century project — surveyed, financed and dug in phases as the city outgrew its walls — and the tall narrow houses along it stand on timber piles driven into wet ground. That habit of planning runs through the place: a centre small enough to cross on foot in half an hour, a cycling network used by everyone rather than by enthusiasts, and a long civic preference for regulating what other cities would rather ban. The rest of Amsterdam is what happens around the plan.
Amsterdam began as a fishing settlement behind a dam on the Amstel, first recorded in 1275. Trade made it a port, and the northern provinces' revolt against Spanish rule made it a capital of one: when Antwerp fell in 1585, its merchants, its bankers and its Sephardic Jewish community moved north, and Amsterdam inherited a trading network it had not built. The century that followed made it the richest city in Europe. The Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602 and financed through the first public stock exchange, ran a trading empire from here, and that money paid for the canal ring, the town hall on Dam Square and most of the paintings now in the Rijksmuseum. It came from colonial trade and, in part, from slavery — something the city and its museums have addressed openly in recent years. Decline came in the eighteenth century, then French occupation, then a slow industrial revival. The German occupation of 1940 to 1945 destroyed a Jewish community that had been part of the city for three centuries. What survived intact was the fabric itself.
Two days cover the canal ring, the big museums and one neighbourhood on foot. Four let you take a boat, cross the IJ, and spend an afternoon in the Jordaan or De Pijp doing very little.
Feel the city
The intangible side — what you remember after
Top experiences
If you do nothing else, do these — in order
Places
Tap a pin, or a place, to preview it on the map
Historic & landmarks 2
Mosques & churches 1
Bazaars & markets 2
Waterfront & islands 1
Museums & galleries 4
Streets & nightlife 1
Viewpoints & parks 2
Local quarters 3
Beyond the city
The Netherlands is small and flat. Windmill villages, the bulb fields, the North Sea dunes and Haarlem all sit within an hour of the city.
Know before you go
The practical side
April and May bring the bulb fields and long light without the summer crush. September is the balance: warm, quiet canals, everything open. Winter is dark and wet by four in the afternoon, which is precisely what the brown cafés are for.
Never step into a bike lane without looking. Cyclists do not automatically have right of way, whatever you have read, but they come fast and will not slow. The Dutch are direct rather than rude. In the red-light streets, photographing the women in the windows is prohibited and taken seriously.
Amsterdam is a safe city and an almost cashless one; some places take cards only. The real hazards are traffic and bicycle theft rather than crime. Pickpockets work the crowded centre and the trams toward the museums, and that is the only place worth thinking about your pockets.
The euro. Cards and phones work nearly everywhere and a number of places no longer take notes at all, so a card is more useful here than cash. Tipping is rounding up rather than a percentage — Dutch service staff are on a wage.