The Jordaan
The old working-class quarter turned into the pleasantest: hidden courtyards, markets and brown cafés.
Duration
1 hr 30 min – 3 hrs
Best time
Saturday morning
Open
Every day
Entry price
Free
The Jordaan was built in the seventeenth century alongside the canal ring, but for workers and craftsmen: smaller plots, narrower canals, far higher density. It was the poor quarter of the city, and it stayed that way until the 1970s.
It keeps its hofjes, courtyards of charitable almshouses founded in the seventeenth century, hidden behind anonymous street doors — some open during the day, and you go in quietly. The Noordermarkt market, on Saturday mornings, is the best in the city.
Getting there
Tram 13 or 17, Westermarkt stop, then on foot to the north. Centraal station is a twenty-minute walk.
Rules on site
The hofjes are lived-in housing: go in quietly, during the posted hours, and do not photograph the windows. Some are closed to the public all year.
Other places in Amsterdam
- The canal ringFour concentric canals dug in the seventeenth century, fifteen hundred bridges and leaning houses.
- Anne Frank HouseThe annexe behind the swinging bookcase, left bare.
- RijksmuseumRembrandt's Night Watch and Vermeer's Milkmaid, in a brick palace.
- VondelparkForty-seven hectares in the middle of the city, where Amsterdam runs, eats and plays.