Tuschinski Theatre

Historic · Reguliersbreestraat (Centrum)Amsterdam,Netherlands

A 1921 Amsterdam film palace mixing three styles at once, still showing films daily, named for the emigrant who built it and died at Auschwitz.

Tuschinski is a 1921 film palace where three styles collide, and it still shows films every day. Amsterdam School brick outside, Jugendstil in the foyer, Art Deco in the hall — the owner told his architect, Hijman Louis de Jong, to use everything at once. Critics called the result plum-tart architecture. The foyer is where most of it happens: Jaap Gidding designed a peacock pattern that runs across the ceiling, down the walls and into the carpet, so the whole room works as one design. The man whose name is over the door was only passing through. Abraham Tuschinski landed in Rotterdam in 1904 on his way from Poland to America, and never got any further. He started out running a boarding house for other emigrants and ended up with four cinemas. This one cost more than any cinema built in the Netherlands before it. In 1940 the Germans took it from him and renamed it the Tivoli. They murdered him at Auschwitz in 1942. The name went back over the entrance in 1945, and it is the one you walk in under.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Walk into the foyer without buying anything — it is open to the street through the day and holds the peacock ceiling, the carpet and the ironwork.
Only Hall 1 is the decorated auditorium — the other screens here are ordinary modern rooms. Everything shows in its original language with Dutch subtitles, so an English-language film is the simplest way in.
Photograph the front after dark — the four bronze lamps and the glazed tiles were made to be seen lit, and Reguliersbreestraat is too narrow for a daylight shot to hold both cupola towers.
Count the styles on one facade — Amsterdam School masonry, Jugendstil ironwork and Art Deco ceramics sit together on the front, which is why contemporaries could not agree whether to admire it.

Things to do

1
Stand still in the foyer for five minutes
Go in from Reguliersbreestraat and stop before the stairs. The peacock pattern runs from the carpet up the walls and across the ceiling, so choose one motif and follow it round the room. The marble, the ironwork and the lamps are from 1921 or copied exactly from what was there.
2
Watch a film in the big hall
Hall 1 is the original auditorium and the only one worth choosing for the room itself. Sit far enough back to take in the side balconies and the painted figures along the walls, and get to your seat early, because once the lights go down you can no longer see any of it.
3
Look at the facade from the far pavement
Cross Reguliersbreestraat and look up. The two towers with their cupola roofs, the glazed tiles, the ceramic sculpture and the four bronze lamps were designed to be read from this distance. At night the lamps separate the facade from the shopfronts either side of it.