Discover Amsterdam at your own pace: a historic walking route with stories told where they happened.
Amsterdam is a city that refuses to be told what it should be. The Canal Belt is the famous backdrop, but the real pleasure often lies just outside it: in the Jordaan with its narrow streets and brown pubs, in the courtyards hidden behind ordinary front doors. Walk there and you notice the city is headstrong down to its smallest alley. This route goes looking for that Amsterdam.
In about two and a half hours and thirteen stops you walk from the Dam to the Jordaan and the Haarlemmerbuurt, around five kilometres in total. You start at the Dam, with the Koninklijk Paleis as your first backdrop. You pass the Huis met de Hoofden and the Westerkerk, and carry on to the Haarlemmerpoort. The route ends at the Ronde Lutherse Kerk. Along the way you meet names like Multatuli and Theo Thijssen, and it is about power, free thinking, living, music and the people behind the facades.
At every stop you read what happened here, look at old photographs and prints of exactly this spot and get a small question or task. Not as a test, but as an invitation to look: up at a facade you would otherwise walk past, or to pause somewhere you would otherwise cycle straight through.
You walk at your own pace, without a guide and without a group. You buy the route, start when you are in Amsterdam and then have 48 hours. A break in a brown pub is allowed, a detour past a courtyard too. As soon as you start, your digital goodie bag arrives by e-mail with tips for the way and a button to pick the route up again at any time.
Power, free thinking, living, music and the people behind the facades: those are the lines this walk follows. Together they show a different Amsterdam than the postcard. Not prettier or uglier, just more headstrong. And once you have seen it, you see it everywhere.