Amsterdam celebrates its 750th anniversary in 2025. Photo / Getty Images
In the year Amsterdam turns 750, Tamara Hinson explores the places responsible for shaping the Netherlands’ tulip and cheese-scented capital
One of the reasons I love Amsterdam? It’s a place where reminders of its past are never far away, whether it’s in places such as Amsterdam Noord, a neighbourhood with a former dockyard at its heart and a shape-shifting skyline of lovingly refurbished warehouses, factories and shipping containers now stuffed with everything from Michelin-starred restaurants to museums, or its canal-streaked centre.
Yes, space is in short supply in the latter, but that’s part of the charm of Amsterdam’s historic centre. And if a single canal house doesn’t quite cut it? Consider 12, instead, and then work your way up to 25. That’s exactly what happened with the Pulitzer Hotel, a luxurious retreat founded by the late Peter Pulitzer (son of Pulitzer Prize founder Joseph Pulitzer) in the 1970s. Peter purchased 12 dilapidated canal houses wedged between the Prinsengracht and Keizersgracht canals and turned them into a luxurious hotel, then continued to snap up neighbouring houses, as and when they became available. Today, this labyrinthine hotel occupies 25 historic former homes. In the hotel’s centre, a glass-walled corridor connects them with the Keizersgracht ones, weaving through the original townhouses’ gardens, now expanded and transformed into a single, leafy urban idyll.
Homages to both Amsterdam and the hotel’s previous residents are everywhere. Beautiful Delft tiles cover the reception desk and in the lobby, there’s a book-filled nook stuffed with tomes written by Pulitzer Prize winners. And then there are the bedrooms. I bag a suite in a townhouse once owned by local merchant Volkert Jansz and built in the 1600s (every room has an information panel relaying information about former residents). Jansz, it turned out, owned several of the houses Peter eventually purchased. I find nods to the former brass craftsman throughout the hotel, including in Jansz, the hotel’s fine dining restaurant, where I find art-like displays of gleaming metal pans.
I can easily understand why the city’s most prosperous traders wanted to base themselves here, close to the canals and to revered places of worship, such as the Westerkerk church, built in the 1600s and referenced by Anne Frank, who wrote about hearing its bells from her Amsterdam hiding place.
The hotel is also just a short walk from the legendary Rijksmuseum, where I’m blown away by the diversity of its collection — my favourite exhibits include a stunning, acid-yellow dinner set produced by the Netherlands’ Leerdam glass factory in 1924 (the brand was one of the first to use certain glass-pressing techniques), Van Gogh’s gorgeous but lesser-known Wheatfield painting, depicting rolling fields in the same sunflower-yellow hue as his most famous masterpiece, and the Man and Machine statue, created by Marinus Johannes Hack in 1913, and once placed outside the Amsterdam office of a company that sold machinery to Indonesia. The stone figure, intended to represent a young Javan man, sits cross-legged with an engine in his lap, and was designed to symbolise the trade connections between the two countries.
The museum doesn’t shy away from the darker periods that shaped it, and one of the more sombre items is a wooden chessboard topped with impossibly intricate earthenware chess pieces. When I look closer, I realise that the chess figures are tanks, grenades and crouching soldiers, and the information panel reveals it was made by Georg Fuhg, a German artist and soldier who was stationed in the Netherlands, and who wanted to glorify Germany’s urge to conquer.
Amsterdam is certainly a city shaped by the horrors of WWII, and while the Anne Frank House, where the young writer hid before capture and where you can gaze behind the bookcase which concealed the entrance to her hiding place, should be on all visitors’ radars, there have never been more ways to gain a fantastic insight into the people and events that left their imprint on the city. One is a canal boat tour with Rederij Lampedusa, on one of two vessels pulled from the Mediterranean a few years ago after being used to carry migrants to Europe. Rederij Lampedusa’s guides include migrants from Syria, Somalia, Eritrea and Egypt, and they offer wonderful, alternative insights into the city they now call home, as well as the events which led them here.
Foodies, meanwhile, should consider a tour with Eating Amsterdam. My one focuses on Jordaan, an historic neighbourhood famous for its traditional canal-side bruin (brown) cafés and pubs — cosy hangouts so-called because of the sparse wooden panelling you’ll often find inside, and more often than not filled with friendly locals belting out the city’s unofficial anthem, Geef mij maar Amsterdam (Amsterdam is the Place for Me).
During my tour I feast on stacks of poffertjes (tiny pancakes drenched in advocaat, a Dutch liquor) and sample Surinamese delicacies at the Swieti Sranang deli while learning why Amsterdam does Surinamese and Indonesian cuisine so well. Hundreds of thousands of Indonesian workers once worked in Surinam, a former Dutch colony, and when the Dutch returned they brought with them a passion for both cuisines. One of my favourite stops is the JWO Lekkernijen deli, a cheese-scented paradise where owners Jan-Willem and Ongkie (one of the first gay couples to marry in the Netherlands) flit between enormous wheels of Edam and slabs of pâté produced by farmers.
During the tour I also learn about spots I’d otherwise miss, including its hofjes — tiny, greenery-filled courtyards also known as widows’ courtyards and scattered across the city, tucked behind its busiest streets. Many date back to the the 16th century, and most were built by wealthy tradesmen who’d amassed huge fortunes and wanted to do their bit for society by building affordable housing, with tree-filled courtyards at their heart, for widows, unmarried women (God forbid) and their children. Visit Karthuizerhof, a hofje that hides behind Karthuizersstraat and is one of the prettiest, and you’ll see a plaque listing the donors responsible for its construction in the 1600s.
New metro connections, meanwhile, have made once-overlooked Amsterdam Noord more accessible, although this hip, historic neighbourhood was always hiding in plain sight — head to the rear of the city’s Centraal Station and you can hop on small passenger ferries — squeezing alongside bicycles and tiny two-person Canta cars beloved by the Dutch — which whisk passengers across the River Amstel to Amsterdam Noord in 12 minutes (the free ferries run every 15 minutes).
Amsterdam Noord’s pièce de résistance is the NDSM Wharf, a former dockyard which is a million miles from the lopsided canal houses in Amsterdam’s centre — but no less historic. A brilliant example of the city’s passion for repurposing is Faralda, a three-suite hotel at the top of a 50-metre crane once used to heave shipping containers onto boats. One of the NDSM Wharf’s biggest draws is the twice-monthly IJ Hallen flea market (one of the largest in the world) which fills two enormous warehouses (when I visit, items on display including everything from a fibreglass UFO to priceless antiques), although the former industrial area is also where you’ll find some of the city’s best street art. Many of these murals adorn the exterior of STRAAT, a gallery inside a former warehouse, and one of the most striking pieces is of a smiling Anne Frank, painted by Brazilian street artist Eduardo Kobra.
Spectacularly trippy — so much so that signs at the entrance warn visitors not to enter when under the influence of mind-altering substances — is nearby NXT, an Amsterdam Noord art museum with a supersized helping of tech and huge installations that combine art, technology, light and sound. I won’t spoil the surprise but it’s immersive, engaging and often confronting — the installations, which are regularly switched up, don’t shy away from tackling hot topics, ranging from the war in Ukraine and climate change to the growing use of surveillance, and rely on technology to show how such issues have a direct impact on our own lives.
I decide to end my visit to Amsterdam with a visit to an NDSM Wharf restaurant and bar called Pllek which, I’m assured, is one of the city’s coolest. I’m somewhat confused to find myself standing outside a rusting shipping container. But it turns out it’s merely the entrance — I emerge from the other end into a sun-drenched, cathedral-like space made from dozens of rainbow-hued repurposed shipping containers, stacked on top of each other to create multiple levels of terraces surrounding a central area with beer hall-style tables and firepits, and an urban beach beyond floor-to-ceiling glass doors.
Cheers, Amsterdam — here’s to another 750 years.
GETTING THERE
Fly from Auckland to Amsterdam with one stopover with Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines, China Southern and China Eastern.
DETAILS
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