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Zeedijk Review
Read our Amsterdam sights reviews. Or post your own.
Zeedijk
- Address: Oudezijde Kolk (near Centraal Station) to Nieuwmarkt, Centrum, Amsterdam | Map It
- Category: Neighborhoods/Streets
- Location: Old City Center
Fodor's Review:
Few streets have had a longer or more torrid history; until recently known as the Black Hole of Amsterdam (because of its concentration of junkies), the Zeedijk is now on the up-and-up. As the original dike created to keep the sea at bay, Zeedijk has been around since Amsterdam began life as a boggy little fishing hamlet. The building of this dike in 1380 probably represented the first twitchings of democracy as individual fishing and farming folk were united to make battle against the sea. Less noble democratic forces saw an opportunity to make a few gulden by catering to lonely, thirsty sailors – a service area businesses ended up providing for centuries. In the last 50 years, dingier dens began a lucrative sideline in heroin and by the 1970s, the only traffic Zeedijk saw was drug traffic. Tourists were advised to avoid the neighborhoood at night because of the junkies and high crime rates. A few years back, the city started cracking down and has been working hard to clean up the area. It's by no means a pristine street, but it's now much easier to accept the stray, dubious-looking character as merely part of the scenery as opposed to its definition.
There are several interesting sights along the Zeedijk. The 17th-century Sint Olofskapel (St. Olaf Church), named after the patron saint of dikes, sports a life-affirming sculpture: grains growing out of a supine skeleton (this used to be a positive message). Across the street at No. 1 is one of only two timbered houses left in the city. It does have stone sides – as law dictated after the great fires of 1421 and 1452. Dating from around 1550, in't Aephen (In the Monkeys) provided bedding to destitute sailors if they promised to return from their next voyage with a monkey. The way each floor sticks slightly more outward than the one below it accounts for the way most of Amsterdam's brick buildings lean forward: they were built aesthetically to follow this line. Café Maandje at No. 65 was the first openly gay bar. Its window maintains a shrine to its former proprietor and the spiritual forebear of lesbian biker babes everywhere: Bet van Beeren (1902-67). Although the café opens only on the rarest of occasions, a model of its interior can be viewed at the Amsterdams Historisch Museum. The rest of the street is a quirky mixture of middle-range Asian restaurants, brown cafés with carpeted tables, specialty shops, and galleries. The Chinese community is in full visual effect at the end of the street, where recently the gloriously colorful pagoda-shape Fo Kuang Shan Buddhist Temple (No. 118) arose.
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