Amsterdam (Rough Guide) - Martin Dunford [32]
The Old Centre | The Red Light District |
Oudezijds Voorburgwal
The front of the Oude Kerk overlooks the northern reaches of Oudezijds Voorburgwal, whose imposing canalside houses are a reminder of its prosperous, seventeenth-century heyday. The bottom end of the canal and in particular its last bridge is perhaps the Red Light District’s busiest – and seediest – intersection, but walk for five minutes and you leave most of this behind; indeed in its upper reaches, towards the University, it’s as pretty, unspoiled and historic as anywhere in the city. Through an ornate gateway at Oudezijds Voorburgwal 231 is the Agnietenkapel (currently under restoration), originally part of a Catholic convent, but now owned by the university. Upstairs, the chapel has a good-looking, first-floor auditorium dating from the fifteenth century, formerly used for temporary exhibitions devoted to the university’s history. Roughly opposite, just over the footbridge, the large brick and stone-trimmed building at Oudezijds Voorburgwal 302 has been known as “Ome Jan” (“Uncle John’s”) ever since the days when it was central Amsterdam’s pawnshop. The poet Vondel(see "Warmoesstraat") ended his days working here, and a short verse above the fancy stone entranceway, which comes complete with the city’s coat of arms, extols the virtues of the pawnshop – and the evils of usury. From “Ome Jan”, it’s a couple of hundred metres to the southern end of Oudezijds Voorburgwal, where the Mokum art shop (see "Amsterdam’s commercial art galleries") uses the old Jewish nickname for the city.
The Old Centre | The Red Light District |
The Amstelkring
Situated at the northern end of the canal, Oudezijds Voorburgwal’s main sight is the Amstelkring, OZ Voorburgwal 40 (Mon–Sat 10am–5pm, Sun 1–5pm; €7; www.museumamstelkring.nl), which was momentarily the city’s principal Catholic place of worship and is now one of Amsterdam’s most enjoyable museums. Despite the reformation of 1578, the new regime treated its Catholics well, broadly speaking – commercial pragmatism has always outweighed religious zeal here – but there was a degree of discrimination; Catholic churches were recycled for Protestant use and their members no longer allowed to practise openly. The result was an eccentric compromise; Catholics were allowed to hold services in any private building providing that the exterior revealed no sign of their activities – hence the development of the city’s clandestine churches (schuilkerken), among which the Amstelkring is the only one to have survived intact. Amstelkring, meaning “Amstel Circle”, is the name of the group of nineteenth-century historians who saved the building from demolition.
The Amstelkring, more properly Ons Lieve Heer Op Solder (“Our Dear Lord in the Attic”), occupies the loft of a wealthy merchant’s house and is perfectly delightful, with a narrow nave skilfully shoehorned into the available space. Flanked by elegant balconies, the nave has an ornately carved organ at one end and a mock-marble high altar, decorated with Jacob de Wit’s mawkish Baptism of Christ, at the other. Even the patron of the church, one Jan Hartman, clearly had doubts about de Wit’s efforts – the two spares he procured just in case are now displayed behind the altar. The rest of the house has been left untouched, its original furnishings reminiscent of interiors by Vermeer or de Hooch.
The Old Centre | The Red Light District |
The Zeedijk
You can cut through from the top end of OZ Voorburgwal to the end of the Zeedijk, which was originally just that – a dyke to hold back the sea – and is now a street which girdles the northern end of the Red Light District. A couple of decades ago this narrow thoroughfare was the haunt of drug addicts, and very much a no-go area at night. But it’s been spruced up and now forms a lively route from Stationsplein through to Nieuwmarkt, on the eastern edge of the Red Light District, as well as being