The Jordaan was laid out alongside the grand canals in the seventeenth century and meant for everyone the canal ring did not want: artisans, dyers, tanners, immigrants and the noisy trades. The plan followed old drainage ditches rather than a surveyor's arc, which is why the lanes here run crooked and the canals are small. For three centuries it was poor, crowded and famously loud, with its own accent, its own sentimental songs and a reputation for rioting when pushed. It gentrified hard from the 1970s and is now among the most expensive addresses in the Netherlands.
What survives from the old version is the scale and the hofjes. Unmarked doors along the streets open into almshouse courtyards founded by wealthy citizens for elderly poor women — small, planted, silent, and still lived in. The brown cafés are the other inheritance: dark wooden rooms, some still with sand on the floor, and no reason to hurry. Saturday brings the farmers' market at the Noordermarkt, Monday a cheap fabric and clothing market on the Westerstraat, and neither is put on for visitors.