Royal Palace & Dam Square

Palace · Dam Square (Centrum)Amsterdam, Netherlands

Dam Square sits on the dam across the Amstel that Amsterdam is named after, and the heavy classical block on its western side was never designed as a palace. It went up from 1648 as the town hall of a republic at the height of its wealth, to Jacob van Campen's plan, on more than thirteen thousand timber piles driven into wet ground. The restraint outside hides the point of the building: the Citizens' Hall, a marble room open to any citizen, with maps of the known world and the night sky inlaid in the floor and Atlas carrying the heavens overhead. Louis Napoleon moved in as king in 1808 and it has been a palace ever since. The square around it is the city's crossing point rather than its prettiest corner: trams, pigeons, buskers and the noise of half the city crossing it. The tall white column opposite is the national war memorial, where the country stands silent every fourth of May. Early morning is the only time the cobbles are empty, and the sandstone goes honey-coloured before the crowds arrive.

Worth knowing

Good to know

It stands on thirteen thousand trees — the whole block rests on timber piles driven through the bog to firm sand, and the count is usually given as 13,659, a number the city has repeated for three centuries.
There are two Atlases — one carries the heavens over the Citizens' Hall inside, and a six-metre figure carries the globe on the back of the building, which almost nobody walks round to see.
On 4 May the square stops — the national two minutes' silence for the war dead is held at the memorial here on that evening, and the crossing point of half the city goes completely quiet.

Things to do

1
Stand in the middle of the Citizens' Hall
The room is the width of the building and lit from above, and the marble makes it colder than the street outside. Find the two hemispheres in the floor, then look up at Atlas with the globe on his shoulders. It was built to be walked into by anybody.
2
Cross the square before eight
The Dam is the busiest space in the city for most of the day and almost empty at dawn. The palace front takes the early light and turns from grey to honey, the trams are still running half full, and the pigeons have the cobbles.
3
Look into the sentencing room
On the ground floor at the front of the building is a cold marble chamber where the town hall pronounced its death sentences, three or four times a year. Quellinus carved Justice, Wisdom and Care into the walls and hid a skull among them. The windows face straight onto the square, because the sentence was read in here and the scaffold went up out there.