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and bulging windows, sloping roofs and frilly balustrades – that you can still see in some of the buildings today. Neither was this architectural virtuosity confined to the houses of the well-to-do. In 1901 a reforming Housing Act forced the city council into a concerted effort to clear Amsterdam’s slums, the principal result being the high-quality public housing that still characterizes parts of the Nieuw Zuid, though the prime examples are elsewhere – one in the Western docklands (see "Het Schip") and another, De Dageraad, in the Oud Zuid (see "The Nieuw Zuid"). Later, cutbacks in the city’s subsidy meant that the more imaginative aspects of Berlage’s original scheme for the Nieuw Zuid were toned down, but the area’s wide boulevards and narrow side streets were completed as conceived. In this, Berlage wanted to reinterpret the most lauded features of the city’s seventeenth-century canals – their combination of the grand and spacious with the homely and communal, all in a crisp symmetrical frame.

Nowadays the Nieuw Zuid is one of Amsterdam’s most sought-after addresses. Apollolaan and its immediate environs are especially favoured, with a string of well-maintained apartment blocks intercepted by the occasional larger house designed in a sort of Arts-and-Crafts-meets-Expressionist style. As with almost any residential area, specific attractions are rare, but there is the Amsterdam Hilton, on Apollolaan, where John and Yoko bedded down in 1969, as well as the sprawling parkland of the Amsterdamse Bos, just to the southwest of the Nieuw Zuid.

Trams #5 and #24 from Centraal Station run along Beethovenstraat, which hits Apollolaan about halfway along. For the Amsterdamse Bos, take tram #16 or #24.

The outer districts | The Nieuw Zuid |

Apollolaan and around

Apollolaan, a wide residential boulevard just south of the Noorder Amstelkanaal, is representative of Berlage’s intended grand design, with locals popping to the shops on Beethovenstraat, the main commercial drag. Nonetheless, despite its obvious charms the Nieuw Zuid was far from an instant success with the Dutch bourgeoisie. Indeed, in the late 1930s the district became something of a Jewish enclave – the family of Anne Frank, for example, lived for a time on Merwedeplein just off Churchilllaan. This embryonic community was swept away during the German occupation, their sufferings retold in Grete Weil’s (Dutch-language) novel Tramhalte Beethovenstraat. A reminder of those terrible times is to be found at the intersection of Apollolaan and Beethovenstraat, where a monument, built in 1954, commemorates the shooting of 29 resistance fighters here in 1944 in retribution for the killing of a German security officer – a striking monument showing three somberly determined victims.

On a different note, Apollolaan is also known for the canalside Amsterdam Hilton at no. 138 (see "Freddy Heineken"), a modern high-rise hotel where John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged their famous week-long “Bed-In” for peace in 1969. Part celebrity farce, part skilful publicity stunt – “Hair, Peace; Bed, Peace” signs were plastered all over the place – the couple’s anti-war proclamations were certainly heard far and wide, but in Britain the press focused on the supposed evil influence of Yoko on John, which satisfied at least three subtexts – racism, sexism and anti-Americanism. The two megastars stayed in Suite 902/4 – as visitors can still do today.

At the west end of Apollolaan is the Amsterdam Lyceum, another excellent example of the Amsterdam School of architecture, and in front is a large and bold brick monument of 1955 celebrating the Dutch East Indies, an unrepentant tribute to several hundred years of colonialism.

The outer districts | The Nieuw Zuid |

The Amsterdamse Bos

Comprising a substantial chunk of wooded parkland, the Amsterdamse Bos (www.amsterdamsebos.nl) is the city’s largest open space. Planted during the 1930s, the park was a laudable, large-scale attempt to provide gainful work for the city’s unemployed, whose numbers had risen alarmingly following the Wall Street Crash