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from 1648, made by the architect and slightly different from the finished article. There are also views of Dam Square in the early seventeenth century showing both the old and new town hall, while Room 7 has a depiction of the East India Company’s docks in 1696, along with a scale model of the same. Room 10 examines the paternalism of the city’s merchant oligarchy, with paintings depicting the regents of several orphanages, self-contented bourgeoisie in the company of the grateful poor, notably Pickenoy’s picture of the Rapshuis and Van der Voort’s depiction of the Spinhuis, as well as Bartholomew van der Helst’s Governors and Governesses of the Spinhuis in the Schuttergalerij outside, which captures both the sternness of the institution (see "Oudezijds Achterburgwal") and its daily routine going on behind them. Across the Schuttergalerij, Room 11 is distinguished by two paintings of the surgeons’ guild at work – look out for Rembrandt’s wonderful, if gruesome, Anatomy Lesson of Dr Jan Deijman – and the later Anatomy Lesson of Dr William Roëll, from 1728.

Painting at the Amsterdams Historisch Museum

The museum doesn’t just focus on the Golden Age, but dutifully and effectively records the lives of well-to-do Amsterdammers in the eighteenth century (when the city fancied itself as among the most refined and cultured centres of Europe), the nineteenth century, and right up to the modern era, starting with Breitner’s Dam Square of 1898 and Jacob Maris’s view of the Schreierstoren. There is an inevitable focus on the war years and the Nazi occupation, including film footage of the city’s liberation. Postwar material includes displays on the CoBrA art movement (see "Amsterdam galleries: a hit list") and Karel Appel’s murals for the town hall (now decorating the city’s Grand Hotel restaurant), the development of Schiphol Airport, the liberalization of dope and the rise of coffeeshops, and even a mock-up of an old brown café.

The Old Centre | The Rokin and Kalverstraat |

eiligeweg

A little further up Kalverstraat, workaday Heiligeweg, or “Holy Way”, was once part of a much longer route used by pilgrims heading into Amsterdam, and is still used for part of the Stille Omgang (Silent Procession). Every other religious reference disappeared centuries ago, but there is one interesting edifice here: the fanciful gateway of the old Rasphuis (House of Correction) that now fronts a shopping mall at the foot of Voetboogstraat. The gateway is surmounted by a sculpture of a woman punishing two criminals chained at her sides above the single word “Castigatio” (punishment). Beneath is a carving by Hendrick de Keyser (1565–1621), showing wolves and lions cringing before the whip; the inscription reads: “It is a virtue to subdue those before whom all go in dread.”

The Old Centre |

The Red Light District

The whole area to the east of Damrak, between Warmoesstraat, Nieuwmarkt and Damstraat, is the Red Light District, known locally as “De Wallen” (“The Walls”) on account of the series of low brick walls that contain its canals. The district stretches across the two narrow canals that marked the eastern part of medieval Amsterdam, Oudezijds Voorburgwal and Oudezijds Achterburgwal, with the far canal of Kloveniersburgwal forming its eastern boundary. The area is pretty seedy, although the legalized prostitution here has long been one of the city’s most distinctive draws. It wasn’t always so; the handsome facades of Oudezijds Voorburgwal in particular recall ritzier days, when this was one of the wealthiest parts of the city, richly earning its nickname the “Velvet Canal”. The two canals, with their narrow connecting passages, are thronged with “window brothels” and at busy times the on-street haggling over the price of various sex acts is drowned out by a surprisingly festive atmosphere – entire families grinning more or less amiably at the women in the windows or discussing the specifications (and feasibility) of the sex toys in the shops. Another feature is the hawkers who line the streets touting the peep shows and “live sex” within,