The Westerkerk stands where the canal ring meets the Jordaan, and its tower is the tallest church tower in Amsterdam at 85 metres. Hendrick de Keyser designed it and died a year into the work; his son Pieter finished it, and it opened in 1631 as the biggest Protestant church built anywhere in the young Dutch Republic. Inside it is deliberately plain — whitewashed, wide, full of daylight, with the pulpit rather than an altar at the centre of attention. What sits on the spire belongs to another story altogether: a blue and gold imperial crown, which Maximilian I gave the city the right to use in 1489 and which Amsterdam has carried in its coat of arms ever since.
Rembrandt was buried here in October 1669, poor, in a rented grave. Rented graves were cleared and reused, so the exact spot is gone; a memorial plaque on the north wall is a guess. The tower is the reason most people stop, though the climb has been shut since the 2023 restoration; what is left is standing under it when the carillon starts and the bells come down over the water. Anne Frank listened to them from a hiding place along the same canal.