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| Just past the Great Canals, on the outskirts of central Amsterdam, the Jordaan has traditionally been a working-class neighborhood. Today, older residents are being pushed out to make room for a population of students and young couples. While this loss of tradition is sobering, it also marks the appearance of a great bar-culture and unique shopping opportunities in the area. The Jordaan’s tiny, waterway-free streets and back-alleys are the result of a 17th century canal-filling project; in 1934, they were the site of a massive anti-government riot and are now paved in concrete (instead of cobblestones, which were used as missiles by enraged protesters).
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“De Pijp” means ‘the pipe’ in Dutch. Why Amsterdam’s Latin Quarter should have such a name is anyone’s guess; Amsterdammers deny any reference to a local predilection for narcotics. The neighborhood was the site of crowding and ethnic and cultural mixing in the early 1900’s. From 1950-80, squatters set up shanty towns on its streets. Since 1930, De Pijp has hosted the massive Albert Cuyp market, the largest outdoor market in Europe. Weary shoppers can collapse on the welcome green swathes of Sarphati Park.
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The Plantage is Amsterdam’s greenest neighborhood. It contains the Hortus Botanicus, a green-house studded botanical garden originally built in the 17th century, and the Natura Artis Magistra (Nature is the Mistress of Art) Zoo, which is usually simply called the Artis Zoo. On a sadder note, the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a theater built in 1893 to be one of the finest in Europe, became Amsterdam’s Nazi deportation center in 1942; some 100,000 Jews passed through its gates.
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Tired of all of Amsterdam’s late-renaissance buildings? Take a trip to KNSM Island, just off the east dock, where many of Amsterdam’s corporations make their homes and contemporary architecture abounds.
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| The Red Light District is the place to go to witness (and, perhaps, sample) Amsterdam’s portion of the Netherlands’ legalized prostitution industry. Walk past storefronts where ladies in white latex grind to throbbing beats or sometimes stare listlessly out at passersby. Doorways here are indeed hung with red lights, which give the area a vibrant, if slightly sad, look at night. The Deutsche Brucke, a stone canal-crossing some several hundred years old, is a good place to see German prostitutes (many of whom are heroin addicts) peddling their wares. Admittedly, these are sights you won’t see back in Kansas, but do not attempt to take photographs, or you will rapidly find yourself on the bad side of a very big, very angry pimp or security guard. Zeedjik is Amsterdam’s Chinatown; refurbished in the 1980’s, the street is fantastic for a cheap lunch or late-night breakfast. Waterlooplein Square was just a series of canals until the end of the 19th century, when city planners filled these waterways in to make a marketplace for the city’s Jewish merchants; today the square hosts a fleamarket. De Oude Kerk (The Old Church) was built in the Roman style in the 1200’s, but only finished in the 15th century. Skasia Rembrandt, the wife of the master-painter, is buried here. |
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