Amsterdam (Rough Guide) - Martin Dunford [48]
The interior of the house has been returned to something akin to its eighteenth-century appearance, with wood panelling and fancy stuccowork, plus ancestral portraits of stern men and sober women in their be-ruffed Sunday best. Highlights include the ornate copper balustrade on the staircase, into which is worked the name “Van Hagen-Trip” (after the former owners of the house); the van Loons filled the spaces between the letters with fresh iron curlicues to prevent their children falling through. The top-floor landing has several pleasant grisaille paintings of classical figures – including Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar – and one of the bedrooms, the “painted room”, is decorated with a Romantic painting of Italy, depicting a coastal scene with overgrown classical ruins and diligent peasants. Such artistic conceits were a favourite motif with Amsterdam’s bourgeoisie from around 1750 to 1820. The oddest items are the fake bedroom doors; the eighteenth-century owners were so keen to avoid any lack of symmetry that they camouflaged the real doors and created imitation, decorative replacements in the “correct” position instead. The other oddity is at the bottom of the garden, where the old coach house has trompe l’oeil windows; again, symmetry dictated that the building must have windows, but no self-respecting plutocrat wanted to be watched by his servants – hence the illusion.
The Grachtengordel | Grachtengordel south |
Thorbeckeplein, Rembrandtplein and Reguliersbreestraat
Short and stumpy Thorbeckeplein hosts an assortment of unexciting bars and restaurants, flanking a statue of Rudolf Thorbecke (1798–1872), a far-sighted liberal politician and three-times Dutch premier whose reforms served to democratize the country in the aftermath of the European-wide turmoil of 1848.
Thorbeckeplein leads into Rembrandtplein, a dishevelled patch of greenery that was formerly Amsterdam’s butter market. The square took its present name in 1876, and is today one of the city’s nightlife centres, although its crowded restaurants and bars are firmly geared towards tourists. Rembrandt’s statue stands in the middle, his back wisely turned against the square’s worst excesses. Of the prodigious number of cafés and bars here, only the café of the Schiller Hotel at no. 26 stands out, with an original Art Deco interior lit by geometrical chandeliers and decorated with stained-glass windows.
The crumbling alleys to the north of Rembrandtplein contain several of the city’s raunchier gay bars, while Reguliersbreestraat is just supremely tacky. Nevertheless, tucked in among the slot-machine arcades, fast-food joints and sex shops is the city’s most extraordinary cinema – the Tuschinski, at Reguliersbreestraat 26–28. Opened in 1921 by a Polish Jew, Abram Tuschinski, the cinema boasts a marvellously well-preserved Art Deco facade and interior, which features coloured marble and a wonderful carpet, handwoven in Marrakesh to an original design. Tuschinski himself died in Auschwitz in 1942. The network of alleys behind the cinema was once known as Duivelshoek (Devil’s Corner), and, although it’s been tidied up and sanitized, enough backstreet seediness remains to make it a spot to be avoided late at night.
The Grachtengordel | Grachtengordel south |
The Munttoren and Bloemenmarkt
Muntplein is overlooked by the sturdy, late-medieval Munttoren, originally part of the old city wall. Later, it was adopted as the municipal mint – hence its name