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the church of almost all its ecclesiastical tackle during the Reformation, but its largely bare interior does hold several interesting features. These include some folksy misericords, a few faded vault paintings recovered from beneath layers of whitewash in the 1950s, and the unadorned memorial tablet of Rembrandt’s first wife, Saskia van Uylenburgh, beneath the smaller of the two organs. Much more diverting, however, are the three beautifully coloured stained-glass windows beside the ambulatory in what was once the Chapel of Our Lady. Dating from the 1550s, all three depict religious scenes – from left to right: the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Assumption of the Virgin – and each is set above its respective donors. The characters are shown in classical gear with togas and sandals and the buildings in the background are firmly classical too, reflecting both artistic fashion and a belief that Greco-Roman detail was historically accurate. A fourth, rather different stained-glass window is located on the other side of the ambulatory. A secular piece of 1655, it features the Spanish king Philip IV ceding independence to a representative of the United Provinces (the Netherlands) under the terms of the Treaty of Munster of 1648, which wrapped up the Thirty Years’ War. Like the earlier windows, the architectural backdrop is classical, but here it’s to emphasize the dignity of the proceedings – and the king and the Dutch emissaries wear contemporary clothes.

Outside, the Oude Kerk tower is open weekends between April and September (1–5pm; €5) and offers predictably great views in a city with relatively few such opportunities.

The Old Centre | The Red Light District | The Oude Kerk |

Commercial sex in Amsterdam

Developed in the 1960s, the Netherlands’ – and especially Amsterdam’s – liberal approach to social policy has had several unforeseen consequences, the most dramatic being its international reputation as a centre for both drugs and prostitution. However, the tackiness of the Red Light District is just the surface sheen on what has been a serious attempt to address the reality of sex for sale, and to integrate this within a normal, ordered society. In Dutch law, prostitution has long been legal, but the state had always drawn the line at brothels and soliciting in public. The difficulties this created for the police were legion, so finally, in 1996, a special soliciting zone was established and a couple of years later brothels were legalized in the hope that together these changes would bring a degree of stability to the sex industry. The authorities were particularly keen to get a grip on the use of illegal immigrants as prostitutes and also to alleviate the problem of numbers.

This legislation is partly the result of a long and determined campaign by the prostitutes’ trade union, De Rode Draad (“The Red Thread”), which has improved the lot of its members by setting up new health insurance and pension schemes – and generally fighting for regular employment rights for prostitutes. Whether this has happened or not is debatable: the number of “window brothels” is limited, so a significant group of women ply their trade illicitly in bars and hotels. There are still lots of illegal immigrants in the Red Light District, and lots of pimps too. The windows, which are rented out for upwards of €100 a day, are less easy to control than registered brothels, and at least half of the District’s prostitutes hand over some of their earnings to a pimp, who will usually be Dutch and often an ex-boyfriend.

The city has taken action over the past couple of years to crack down not only on this but also on the number of outlets in the Red Light District, buying up some of the buildings itself and enouraging initiatives like Redlight Fashion Amsterdam, in which young fashion designers have exhibited their clothes in some of the windows. Some of the clubs have closed too, and despite dissent from De Rode Draad, the PIC and the pressure group Platform 1010 (named after the area postcode), it seems likely that the number