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hotel-worldwide.com
city guide
AMSTERDAM is a beguiling capital, a compact mix
of the provincial and the cosmopolitan. It has a welcoming attitude
towards visitors and a uniquely youthful orientation. For many, however,
its world-class museums and galleries - notably the Rijksmuseum, with its
collection of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings, and the Van Gogh Museum
- are reason enough to visit.
Amsterdam was founded on a dam on the river Amstel in
the thirteenth century. During the Reformation it rose in stature, taking
trade away from Antwerp and becoming a haven for its religious refugees.
Having shaken off the yoke of the Spanish, the city went from strength to
strength in the seventeenth century, becoming the centre of a vast trading
empire with colonies in Southeast Asia. Amsterdam accommodated its
expansion with the cobweb of canals that gives the city its distinctive
and elegant shape today. Come the eighteenth century, Amsterdam went into
gentle decline, re-emerging as a fashionable focus for the alternative
movements of the 1960s. Despite a backlash in the 1980s, the city still
takes a uniquely progressive approach to social issues and culture, with a
buzz of open-air summer events, intimate clubs and bars, and relaxed
attitude to soft drugs
The City
Amsterdam is a small city, and, although the concentric canal system can
be initially confusing, finding your bearings is straightforward. The
medieval core boasts the best of the city's bustling streetlife and is
home to shops, many bars and restaurants,...
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