De Pijp

Neighborhood · De PijpAmsterdam, Netherlands

De Pijp was thrown up in the 1870s and 80s to house workers pouring into a growing Amsterdam, and it was built for speed and profit rather than for living in — narrow streets, tall brick tenements, small flats, and a construction scandal when several new buildings collapsed. That cheapness is exactly why the district matters now. Low rents kept it available to students, artists and successive waves of immigrants, and the result is the most mixed quarter of the inner city, where a Surinamese roti counter, a Turkish bakery, a Syrian grill and a natural wine bar sit within one block. It is a place to eat and sit rather than to look at. Terraces come out the moment the sun does and stay out until it is genuinely cold. The Sarphatipark provides the green in the middle, the Albert Cuyp market runs east to west across the middle of it, and the old Heineken brewery anchors the northern edge. Late afternoon is the hinge: the market packs up, the bars fill, and the neighbourhood switches from shopping to sitting without any obvious signal.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Order across the street, not down the menu — the point here is that four kitchens from four countries are within fifty metres, so a meal is easier assembled than ordered.
The park is named after a doctor — Samuel Sarphati, a nineteenth-century physician of Sephardic Jewish descent, organised the city's first waste collection and set up a factory to make cheap decent bread; the park was laid out in his name in 1885.
The streets are long and narrow for a reason — the district was built to a speculative grid for maximum housing, which is where the name 'the pipe' probably comes from.

Things to do

1
Assemble dinner from three counters
Get a roti from a Surinamese kitchen, something grilled from a Turkish counter down the block, and a beer from a terrace, and eat them in whatever order they arrive. The district is set up for exactly this and nobody will find it strange.
2
Sit in the Sarphatipark on a weekday
It is small enough to cross in five minutes and busy without being crowded — dogs, prams, people reading, a pond with a heron. It is the quiet middle of the loudest neighbourhood in Amsterdam and it is used almost entirely by people who live here.