De Waag

Historic · Nieuwmarkt (Centrum)Amsterdam,Netherlands

A fifteenth-century Amsterdam city gate left standing alone in a square, later a weigh house, its guild rooms including the surgeons' dissection theatre.

De Waag is a fifteenth-century city gate left standing alone in the middle of a square, and it is the oldest surviving building in Amsterdam outside the churches. Its first stone went down in 1488, when it was the Sint Antoniespoort, one of three main entrances through a new brick wall. The gate was set at about eight degrees to the street behind it, so that a cannon aimed at the opening could not fire straight into the city. Its towers held prisoners in peacetime. The city outgrew its walls after 1612 and the gate was left on open ground. The courtyard between its two gateways was roofed over in 1617 and it became a weigh house for heavy goods: tobacco bales, anchors, cannon. Guilds took the upper floors — smiths, painters, masons, surgeons — each with its own small door and its emblem cut in stone above it. The surgeons dissected here in front of a paying audience. The ground floor is a café and restaurant now, and the rooms above are closed.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Come early in the morning or late at night — the square fills with cafe tables and stalls by day, and the building only reads as a free-standing gate when nothing is in front of it.
Walk the whole way round it, close in — several small doorways are cut into the base of the towers, each one with the emblem of the guild that used it carved above the arch.
The upstairs is shut — the octagonal room under the dome is an events space with no public access, and the ground floor is a restaurant, so there is no route to the anatomy theatre.
Notice that the gate is turned off the street line — the twist was defensive, and the whole square grew around the building afterwards, which is why nothing lines up with anything here.
Get far enough back to separate the towers — from across the square the low octagonal centre reads as a later block dropped onto a round-towered medieval gate.

Things to do

1
Circle the building and count the guild doors
Walk once round the outside, close enough to touch the brick. You will pass several small doorways cut into the base of the towers, each with a carved emblem above it. They are the original separate entrances for the guilds that shared the upper floors, and each one still announces its trade.
2
See the square as the ground the wall left empty
Stand back and look at the ground rather than the building. Nieuwmarkt exists because the wall and the water in front of it were cleared away, which left the gate standing alone with open space on every side. Everything around the edge of the square was built afterwards, facing in.
3
Pick out the newest large piece of a medieval building
From the far side of the square, look at the middle of the roof. A low octagonal tower sits there, plainly out of keeping with the round medieval towers below it. The surgeons had it built in 1690 to hold an amphitheatre, and it is the last big thing anyone added to the gate.