Amsterdam (Rough Guide) - Martin Dunford [24]
The Old Centre | Damrak and the Nieuwe Zijde |
Spuistraat and the Spui
Spuistraat runs parallel with Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal for much of its length, a happening street, liberally sprinkled with bars and restaurants, and the location of central Amsterdam’s last squat, Vrankrijk, at number 216, which at the time of writing had been closed down after a squatter was almost beaten to death there in September 2008. There was a thriving bar and club here, which looks certain to stay closed; whether the squat will reopen remains to be seen, but as one of the city’s “legal” squats its chances are good as long as there are no more violent incidents. At its top and buzziest end it opens out onto the Spui, a wide, tram-clanking square flanked by the appealing Athenaeum bookshop and a number of café-bars. In the middle is a cloying statue of a young boy, known as ’t Lieverdje (“Little Darling” or “Loveable Scamp”), a gift to the city from a cigarette company in 1960. It was here in the mid-1960s, with the statue seen as a symbol of the addicted consumer, that the playful Sixties anarchist group, the Provos, organized some of their most successful ludiek (pranks).
The Old Centre |
Dam Square
Situated at the heart of the city, Dam Square gave Amsterdam its name – it was here, in the thirteenth century, that the River Amstel was dammed; the fishing village that grew around it became known as “Amstelredam”. Boats could sail down the Damrak into the square, and unload in the middle of the village, which soon prospered by trading herring for Baltic grain. In the early fifteenth century, the building of Amsterdam’s principal church, the Nieuwe Kerk, followed by the town hall (now the Koninklijk Paleis), formally marked Dam Square as Amsterdam’s centre. Today it’s an open and airy but somehow rather desultory space, despite – or perhaps partly because of – the presence of the main municipal war memorial, a prominent stone tusk adorned by bleak, suffering figures and decorated with the coats of arms of each of the Netherlands’ provinces (plus the ex-colony of Indonesia). The memorial was designed by Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud (1890–1963), a De Stijl stalwart who thought the Expressionism of Berlage much too flippant.
The Old Centre | Dam Square |
The Koninklijk Paleis
Dominating Dam Square is the Koninklijk Paleis (www.koninklijkhuis.nl), the Royal Palace, although the title is deceptive, given that this vast sandstone structure was built as the city’s Stadhuis (Town Hall), and only had its first royal occupant when Louis Bonaparte moved in during the French occupation (1795–1813).
The exterior of the palace is very much to the allegorical point: twin tympani depict Amsterdam as a port and trading centre, the one at the front presided over by Neptune and a veritable herd of unicorns. Above these panels are representations of the values the city council espoused – at the front, Prudence, Justice and Peace, to the rear Temperance and Vigilance on either side of a muscular, globe-bearing Atlas. One deliberate precaution, however, was the omission of a central doorway – just in case the mob turned nasty (as they were wont to do) and stormed the place.
The interior also proclaims the pride and confidence of the Golden Age, principally in the lavish Citizen’s Hall, an extraordinarily handsome, arcaded marble chamber where the enthroned figure of Amsterdam looks down on the earth and the heavens, which are laid out at her feet in three circular, inlaid marble maps, one each of the eastern and western hemispheres, the other of the northern sky. Other allegorical figures ram home the municipal point: flanking “Amsterdam” to left and right