KINBoat Central Station Tour

Designed by Pierre Cuypers, also the architect of the Rijksmuseum. If you place the buildings next to each other, you’ll see the resemblance! The building is about 300 meters long and was built on 8,687 wooden poles over 8 years, opening in 1889.

Look at the east wing: that is the Royal Pavilion, built for the arrivals and departures of the Dutch royal family. On the ridge of its roof stands the King’s Shield-Bearer, an armored knight guarding a shield with the Dutch lion. Below the roofline of the central section you’ll find the coats of arms of European trading cities such as London, Paris and Rome: Cuypers wanted to show that the railway connected Amsterdam to the world.

Built in 1487 as a defense tower in Amsterdam’s medieval city wall. Its old name, Schreyhoeckstoren, means “sharp-corner tower”: it stood at a sharp angle in the wall.

Legend: because schreien also means “to weep” in Dutch, the story grew that sailors’ wives stood here crying as their men sailed off. It’s a lovely story, but it is a later folk explanation of the name.

Fact: in 1609 Henry Hudson set sail from here on behalf of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He was looking for a northern route to Asia and ended up in what is now New York. A memorial plaque on the tower recalls his voyage.

Built in 1913 as a shared office building for six Amsterdam shipping companies in the recognizable style of the “Amsterdam School,” and nowadays it serves as the Amrâth Hotel.

A floating Chinese restaurant, modelled on the famous floating restaurants of Hong Kong. With its pagoda-style decks it is one of the most photographed restaurants in Amsterdam, and it has a great view over the water. Delicious food!

Full name is “New Metropolis,” this is a “hands-on” scientific museum for children, designed by Renzo Piano and it also serves as the entrance to the IJ tunnel with a large terrace on the sloping side.

Former “’s Lands Zee Magazijn,” built in the 17th century, it served as a warehouse for the “Admiralty of Amsterdam,” where all supplies for the war fleet of the “Admiralty” were handled. Nowadays, it’s a museum specialized in the maritime history of the Netherlands.

The VOC primarily traded in spices and other valuable goods from Asia, which were stored in the warehouses of merchant houses along Amsterdam’s canals. These warehouses were specially designed with large attics and hoisting beams on their facades to store the precious trade goods ‘high and dry’.

Founded in 1638, the Hortus Botanicus is one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world. The small garden has over 6,000 trees and plants, a greenhouse with three different tropical climates, and a butterfly house filled with hundreds of butterflies. Look out for the Eastern Cape cycad in the Palm House: it is about 300 years old.

The Portuguese Synagogue, also known as the Esnoga, or Snoge, is an Orthodox Jewish congregation and synagogue, completed in 1675.

The Amsterdam Sephardic community was one of the largest and richest Jewish communities in Europe during the Dutch Golden Age, and their very large synagogue reflected this.

In the 17th century many Amsterdam women were left on their own: their husbands went to sea, and a large share of them never came back. To care for elderly women, the deacons of the Reformed Church built the Amstelhof here, begun in 1681 on what was then cheap land on the far side of the Amstel. It served as a home for the elderly until 2007.

In 2009 the building reopened as Hermitage Amsterdam, a branch of the Hermitage in St Petersburg. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the museum cut its ties with Russia and was renamed H’ART Museum.

Traditionally an important shipping route between the Zuiderzee and the hinterland, and the river our city is named after. Around 1270 a dam was built in the Amstel, which quickly turned the fishing village into a trading town. The oldest document that mentions Amsterdam dates from 1275: a toll privilege from Count Floris V, which freed its people from paying toll in Holland. In it the town is called Amestelledamme (“dam in the Amstel”), a name that gradually became Amsterdam. City rights followed around 1300.

We are now sailing on the Herengracht, part of the prestigious expansion of the city in the early 17th century. This stretch runs from the Leidsegracht to the Amstel, and here you mainly see very large buildings: the city council only issued large plots here, to attract the rich merchant families.

Popular story: taxes were said to be based on the width of the house and the number of windows, and even a double staircase was taxed extra. Guides love to tell it, but historians doubt it; the high price of land along the canal is the more likely reason most houses are so narrow.

One of the most beautiful canals – famous for its seven identical arched bridges. In 1901, the city council wanted to fill in this canal for the new Electric Tram, but fortunately, it was rejected due to many protests. In the evening, it is very beautiful because the arches are illuminated, and from Thorbeckeplein, this is a beautiful sight!

On the Amstelveld stands the only remaining wooden emergency church. It’s currently being used as a concert hall.

These facade stones served as orientation points for the seventeenth-century residents of the Dutch city. The small artistic works showed where the baker sold his breads and where you could go for shoe repairs.

The Prinsengracht is the outermost of the three concentric canals from the 17th century. Here you see that the buildings are much simpler than on the Heren and Keizersgracht. Many houses here were used as warehouses and factories.

De Magere Brug, “the Skinny Bridge”, probably owes its name to the very narrow wooden bridge first built here in 1691. A popular legend says two sisters named Mager, living on opposite banks, paid for it so they could visit each other; a nice story, but there is no evidence for it.

The bridge is internationally famous from the James Bond film “Diamonds Are Forever” (1971). And the newest legend of all: if there are loving couples on board, give each other a kiss exactly under the bridge, and you’ll stay in love for the rest of your life!

The name comes from the old blue-painted wooden bridge that connected the city to the Vlooienburg island, a Jewish neighborhood until World War II. The current, rather grand stone bridge dates from 1883, with lamps, crowns and ship’s prows inspired by the bridges over the Seine in Paris.

The current Royal Palace on Dam Square was the original Amsterdam City Hall, from the early 19th century, the city hall moved to the Oudezijds Voorburgwal, eventually, this building became too small and in the 1980s, architects Holzbauer, Holt & Cees Dam designed a new city hall at the location of Waterlooplein/Oude Vlooienburg. This building has a dual function as the Amsterdam City Hall and a theater for the National Opera & Ballet.

The Dancing Houses are a row of crooked old canal houses that lean against each other. The reason is underground: Amsterdam is built on wooden piles, and the firm sand layer that can carry a house lies about 13 meters deep. Piles that don’t reach it, or that rot over the centuries, let a house sink unevenly. So what do you get? A row of dancing houses.

A statue of the Amsterdam-born philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), one of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment, made by Nicolas Dings in 2008.

The irony: in 1656 the Portuguese Jewish community expelled the young Spinoza for his radical ideas, and his books were later banned. Today the city honors him with a statue. On the base you can read his words “The objective of the state is freedom”. On his coat sit sparrows, birds that have always lived here, and rose-ringed parakeets, newcomers to the city: together they stand for an Amsterdam of both natives and immigrants. The roses refer to his signet ring, which carried the motto Caute: “be careful”.

Until World War II, a large Jewish market, now a flea market. Where the city hall stands now was until the Second World War the “Jewish Quarter.” Rotterdam bears the scars of the war due to the large bombing, and Amsterdam bears the scars of the deported Jewish population. Almost all residents of this part of Amsterdam were deported by the Germans, and few survived… unfortunately! Due to the harsh winters and lack of food, this period was also called the “Hunger winter”; the vacant houses were stripped of all wood (= not furniture etc.) so that the remaining local population could heat their homes. When the war was over, these houses stood there as “skeletons” and were subsequently demolished.

Café de Sluyswacht was originally built in 1692 as a house for the lock keeper of the Sint Antoniesluis. Today it’s a café and a national monument.

Behind the Sint Antoniesluis is the “Museum Rembrandthuis,” the former home of the famous painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. Rembrandt died in poverty; all his belongings were sold at an auction, and the register of the auction was used to redecorate the house, including Rembrandt’s paintings, to get a good impression of the interior because he had his painting studio at home. This also explains why Rembrandt made so many portraits of Jewish men, as he lived “smack in the middle” of the Jewish quarter.

The round lower part was built around 1516 as a defense tower, to protect the harbor area outside the city wall, right on the former Zuiderzee (now the IJsselmeer). Amsterdam was directly on the sea, hence the lively trade!

In 1606 architect Hendrick de Keyser added the elegant octagonal top with its wooden spire. Only a few years later the tower started to lean, and it was literally pulled straight again with ropes. Its nickname is “Malle Jaap” (Silly Jaap), because its bells used to ring at the most ridiculous times.

A’DAM LOOKOUT is not your usual observation deck. Besides the unparalleled 360-degree view of Amsterdam and the surrounding cities, there is much more to experience on top of this iconic building. Feel the adrenaline rush on Amsterdam’s highest swing Over The Edge, experience the Amsterdam VR Rollercoaster Ride, enjoy an extensive lunch, dinner, snacks or cocktail in the Sky Bar, take your digital souvenir home and learn about the city with the interactive binoculars.

On the left, you see the Saint Nicholas Church – a Catholic basilica built around 1885. Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors and our city.

This hotel is one of the oldest modern hotels in the Netherlands and opened in 1890. It was also the first hotel where electric lighting was installed in every room. You can still see that the hotel was built around a few old houses because at the time, those owners demanded so much money that it was decided to build around them. This story plays a major role in the film Public Works.